It's not just romance that's bad in this film

Rating: 1/10 (14 August 2002)

First of all, it's not entirely because of the lovey-dovey stuff that I do not like this movie. Nevermind the fact that Portman and Christensen have as much chemistry as Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaghey in "Contact": pretty much non-existent. The literally laughable scenes of "romance," which is defined as "cheesy sappy one-liners exchanged at an utterly inopportunate timing" in "George Lucas' Dictionary of Directing," is not the main reason for this movie being particularly bad, but it did make it particularly awful. Think of it as the proverbial "cherry on top" -- not on top of a metaphorical heap of ice cream in this case, but more like a metaphorical heap of cinematic manure. I just thought it was boring. BOOOOORING.... Not exciting, unless you measure how exciting a film is according to how much visual effects your eyes are assaulted with. At some point in time, George Lucas that was directing films died and was replaced by one who directs special effects. The rest of the movie feels like it was totally abandoned by the director (and the actors as well at times). A ten year old can write a script with more clever and exciting lines. Sam Jackson jumps into battle and utters: "This party's over!" Riiiiight.... Christensen mumbles through his confession of love, crying and bitching about "the kiss you should never have given" and exclamating, "I'm in agony!" Well, SO ARE WE! Portman confesses her love later on with her "truly, madly, deeply" crud. Haven't seen a more awkward couple since Freddie Prinze Jr. and Julia Stiles in "Down To You." So in neglecting everything that is not related to CG action scenes (and I hope it was neglect, because if that was truly the product of Lucas direction, then he has officially lost his cinematic mojo), Lucas has sacrificed the entire movie. Since the rest of the movie was incredibly insipid, that meant that the battles had to save the film. Sad to report, that did not happen. What a boring movie. Even the usually decent storytelling wasn't there. Lucas seems to have lost it. I think it's a combination of not having directed anything for nearly two decades before Episode I and the utter arrogance that he has come to possess over the years while he was making gazillion dollars off of the first trilogy. I was actually glad to be assured that Episode II will not be the highest grossing movie this year. Lucas needs some spanking from some movie-goers with decent taste. This is worse that Episode I -- there, I said it! And I've said this after I saw Episode I and I'll say it again: I wish this movie was never made. If I ever run into Mr Lucas, I know what to say: "Those movies that you should never have made...they haunt me in my dreams. I'm in agony!"