A bizarre mix of good fun and terrifyingly painful rubbish

Rating: 5/10 (29 February 2020)

Attack of the Clones is undeniably a film. Beyond that it's quite hard to define anything. The film veers wildly from engaging and exciting to vomit-inducing. It basically comes down to: are you watching Ewan McGregor or Hayden Christensen.
Let's get the garbage out the way first. Nobody can sell dialogue like 'I don't like sand' and make it seem like a love story worthy of the stars but Christensen manages to go above and beyond, finding a way to deliver dialogue so it sounds even more appalling than it was on the page. As Anakin Skywalker, he gives perhaps the least charismatic and enjoyable performance in cinema history. He's helped in his quest to create the worst movie experience imaginable by Natalie Portman doing her very best to win 'least interested actress in the world' award. Their love story and the half of the film it takes up can accurately be described as the worst form of torture and should be outlawed by the geneva convention.
On the other hand, Ewan McGregor gives a winning performance as Obi-Wan Kenobi, delving into a genuinely engaging plot involving the bounty hunter Jango Fett (Temeura Morrison) and a mysterious army of clone soldiers.
For most of the film, we're dealing with a film of two halfs where sadly the bad of one half vastly outweighs the good of the other. Christopher Lee rocks up two thirds of the way through when they remember they're meant to have an actual villain for the movie but it's not enough to save it and you'll find yourself actually rooting for the arena monsters to kill at least two of our three protaganists.
Then Mace Windu shows up on Geonosis to declare this party's over and suddenly everything changes. The last leg of the film sees clones, droids, jedi, a purple lightsabre, a sith lord and Yoda flipping around like there's no tomorrow. It's non-stop action that delivers everything you wanted and leaves you genuinely excited to see more of this Clone War (Dave Filoni's got you covered). If the film was just those 30 minutes I'f give it at least 8 stars.
Basically, fast forward all the bits where Hayden Christensen says or does anything and you may well enjoy this film!