Great Big Steaming Pile of Dooku

Rating: 1/10 (2 June 2002)

Can you follow moving objects with your eyes? If that's all it takes to thrill you, then watching "Attack of the Clones" may well be the most titillating experience of your life! The barrage of mobile things on the screen just doesn't cease. There's even something here for the audio buffs...plenty of those signature rumbling ships, whizzing lasers, and humming lightsabers. Pair up those noises with the visuals, and you have a summer blockbuster!
George Lucas is back, all right...with the second worthless Star Wars movie in a row. I can't understand the ridiculously effusive praise that the majority of reviewers here seem to be heaping upon this stinker. I can only hope that most of the people who hated it felt no inclination to review it at all. I especially love the masterminds who proclaim, "If you don't like it, don't go see it." Yeah, thanks. So we're supposed to walk into the theater with a pre-formed positive opinion? Morons!
If I plunk down $10 for a widget that I soon discover doesn't work, am I not entitled to get a refund or at least a replacement? Of course! Warranties and the Better Business Bureau were created for precisely this purpose! Well, I paid money to see Episode II, and I was extremely disappointed. So why is it that I'm somehow not entitled to criticize Lucas?
George Lucas is just plain lazy...a lazy director and a lazy storyteller. And audiences are lazy for letting him off the hook so easily. Incidentally, Lucas himself deserves absolutely no credit for the "incredible" CGI. His studio paid other people to do that. You will probably never know their names. And I'm positive that Lucas is profiting far more from this venture than all of them combined.
Look, Lucas has countless millions at his disposal. He damn well should shoot for an Oscar-caliber film! Or maybe he's just too afraid of the challenge, so he rests on his laurels and hides behind the brand-name of this movie franchise. And when the critics come out of the woodwork, he can babble on about how it's "not supposed to be great filmmaking" or some other lame excuse. Lazy, lazy, lazy.
A few others here have panned the lifeless acting, glaring plot inconsistencies, and general lack of true Star Wars atmosphere more eloquently than I could, so feel free to comb through the effluvium of laudation below to find the few precious gems of honest criticism.
Never mind the absurd Yoda fight scene, which will only appeal to those who can't let well enough alone and who demand that every movie character be proficient in some martial art. Why, why, why must every big budget sci-fi or action movie nowadays give a nod to "The Matrix"? Can't Yoda just remain a gentle, wizened teacher?
The only thing I really liked about this movie was the Tusken Raider encampment. It wasn't overdone or garish, just very Star-Wars-ian. Of course, it was quickly ruined by Schmi's hilarious death scene. In reference to Anakin, a little boy sitting behind me in the theater said, without a trace of irony, "What's he so sad about?" From the mouths of babes!