Disappointing, a really mediocre film, not up to the saga's high standards

Rating: 3/10 (16 May 2002)

Don't believe the hype - this is *not* the best Star Wars movie since the venerable 'Empire Strikes Back'. It's better than 'Phantom Menace' but then so is flossing your teeth for two and a half hours straight. It's on par with 'Return Of The Jedi' maybe but nowhere near as good as 'A New Hope' and insignificant compared to 'Empire'.
Why is this such an average film? Because the real story of the first trilogy, the fall of the Republic and the rise of an evil Empire has been mostly ignored. The motivation behind the revolution is garbled where it is mentioned at all and there just isn't any grand political intrigue just gibberish.
The other story elements are mostly marginal in quality - hokey love scenes, a plot that is tough to follow thanks to a hack job in editing and the obligatory chase and fight scenes with gonzo special effects. At points the story crawls, sometimes so slowly that your stomach and your bladder will appeal more strongly to you than your sight and hearing and you will not only realize you're hungry and/or need to go to the bathroom, you'll actually get up from your seat in a *Star Wars* movie and feel like you're not missing anything.
Perhaps this saga really has peaked - it's a sad commentary on Hollywood when a computer generated character - the Jedi Master of Jedi Masters Yoda - is the *best* performer in 'Clones' leaving Ewan McGregor and his occasional moment in which you seriously consider the thought that he's channeling Sir Alec Guinness from the Great Beyond in a distant second place.
I hope they really do slaughter just about every major character in Episode 3 - mercilessly pruning the dead weight could help save the saga from descending completely into utter banality.