What were the "critics" talking about?

Rating: 8/10 (16 May 2002)

I attended the midnight showing of "Clones" and while it was not the greatest movie ever made it was certainly better than the media has been leading us to believe. I think that some where placing unachievable expectations on this movie. Is it ground breaking, like the first all those years ago? Yes, but not in the same way.
Like "The Empire Strikes Back", the second act of a three act play often leads to a feeling of unanswered questions. "Clones" has its' share of these. It makes for a difficult job for any director to tell a story when the ending is already known. His craft then becomes one of making sure that we enjoy how we get to the ending. "Clones" gets us to the next step in this trilogy, and I for one am anxious to see how we from Episode II to Episode IV.
Visually the movie is above reproach. "Clones" has taken the next step forward in seamless integration of people and effects.
The acting, while stiff in places, does not appear to be a fault of the actors, but of the script. The only weakness of this movie. The script does get the story told; it does give us some answers to the question of how Darth Vader is born and sets us up for the next movie asking questions about how this is going to work out. When I left "The Empire Strikes Back, all those years ago, the burning question was "Is Darth Vader Luke's father?". We do not have a question of that magnitude this time, but we do have a lot of questions on where we go from here. However, in places the story does appear to be use 20 words when perhaps 12 would do. In others it uses 5 when it feels like it needs 20. The use of C-3P0 and R2-D2 as comic relief, thankfully replacing Jar-Jar, is somewhat overdone. Personally I felt that the CGI Yoda was too good. The puppet would have been better for the close in shots, as it had more character. The CGI has more facial movement, but lacked character.
While somewhat long the time passes quickly, another good indication that it is an enjoyable experience. The worst part of all of this is that I know that I will have a wait of several years to be able to put all of the pieces of this puzzle in place.
I would recommend this movie to everyone, Star Wars fanatic or not, and rate it 8 out of 10.