Puberty leads to the Dark Side

Rating: 4/10 (26 May 2007)

Attack of the Clones is the weakest Star Wars prequel. Revenge of the Sith has its moments; The Phantom Menace at least feels like a Star Wars movie, although a mediocre one. Clones is soulless. People run around with lightsabers, we hear John Williams' theme, but it does not *feel* like Star Wars.
Anakin Skywalker (Christensen), talented but arrogant Jedi apprentice, falls for former queen Padme (Portman), while his mentor Obi-wan (McGregor) tracks down the bad guys. The climax is a battle between the Jedi and the forces of Count Dooku (Lee), allied to Palpatine (McDiarmid).
The love story is atrocious: writing is almost impossibly bad, ranging from the infamous "I don't like sand" line to Padme finally falling in love with Anakin as he reveals his homicidal tendencies (does she have a thing for murderers?). My favorite moment has to be Christensen's grimace as he intones "I WISH I could just WISH away my feelings": he spits the line out like a morsel of rotten food.
By the way, what happened to Christensen? Unlike Natalie Portman - who was equally bad but landed on her feet - and the blameless McGregor, Hayden seems to have disappeared. I know right now he is probably chilling out with some hot model in a swimming pool, but I like to picture him atoning for his acting sins in a remote monastery. Although, to be fair, he did better in Revenge of the Sith.
The movie lacks atmosphere. In a subplot inspired by Ford's The Searchers, a scene with Anakin finding his mother is a gem of unintentional humour, with Shmi's theatrically expiring in the arms of her son. Count Dooku. the second of the prequels' disposable villains after Maul and before Grievous, is introduced anticlimactically as he walks around chatting with a bunch of alien termites.
Weak characters abound: some, like Dexter, are puzzlingly useless. Others, like Boba Fett as a grinning child, are pathetic. Also, we have to endure an action scene with Yoda. Not only it looks silly, it's wrong on a deeper level: Yoda should have been above fights. But this is nothing compared to the character assassination of Darth Vader. In Clones, Anakin is an obnoxious, petulant teen who whines at his father figure and leers at the girl he fancies. Is puberty the path for the Dark Side?
If we needed to see Darth Vader's years as a teenager with raging hormones (and I'd argue we really didn't, the prequels would have worked so much better if we had started with a more mature Anakin as implied in A New Hope), a little more gravitas would have been mandatory.. It's like watching a young Sauron getting wasted with a bunch of Orcs and playing prank calls to Gandalf. Seriously, it's awful.
Special effects are everywhere, drowning the story. See the coliseum battle, a boring set-piece with a bunch of extras waving lightsabers at a maelstrom of CGI foes. Duels are chaotic and forgettable; say what you want of The Phantom Menace, but the Darth Maul fight at least was cool.
4/10