The worst Star Wars film to date

Rating: 3/10 (30 June 2002)

I'm stunned that so many people like this movie. Lucas has linked a few psuedo-set pieces together, drained all of his actors of the least shred of charisma, and used horrible dialogue, motivation, and plot advances as the mortar. Yes, an awful lot of the dialogue from the earlier movies was poor, but folks like Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford, Alec Guiness, James Earl Jones, and Peter Cushing made it work. Here, none of the story works -- everything is absolutely on the nose.
SPOILERS: There are huge problems with the characters behaving inconsistently with the framework. Amidala needs to go into hiding and so hands her vote over to the one person who has proved most unreliable in the past? Anakain was a fiesty but basically okay kid in PHANTOM MENACE, and now ten years of the universe's most elevated spiritual training has turned him into an insufferable, reblious brat? Obi-Wan stumbles onto a planet which is hatching a conspiracy, and the aliens basially just lay out the welcome mat and guide him through everything, entirely unsuspicious of his obvious ignorance? -- after they haven't seen any money or had any communication with their employer in ten years? Yoda suddenly turns into a rabid ferret, incredibly agile and limber, only to sigh and return to limping about with his walking stick when the fight is over? Monsters just happen to attack the prisoners' chains first, freeing them for a fight?
I could go on and on. This was the first Star Wars movie in which I was actually bored the entire time. The only thing that kept me from walking out was that so many people had written about the last thirty minutes or so being incredible. It wasn't, except in terms of hubris. RETURN OF THE JEDI was a silly, hammy mess, but it had drive; PHANTOM MENACE was terribly flat, but it was at least interesting; ATTACK OF THE CLONES is empty, soulless, and visually packed in a way which cries desperation.
There is one moment of wit -- one. Obi-Wan encounters a man in a bar selling deathsticks (subtle, eh?). He performs his mind trick on the man, sending him home to rethink his life. That was funny, and that was all.