Turn down the volume and you might enjoy it...

Rating: 1/10 (1 October 2002)

From the first words spoken in the movie where Padme's bodyguard says a variant of the classically crass "we're safe" or "looks like we've lost them" phrase, which comes briefly before the blatantly obvious explosion, the viewer becomes painfully aware that Lucas should be making silent movies. I can't remember precisely what it was Harrison Ford once said of George Lucas, but it was along the lines of "If he [Lucas] could find a way to remove actors from the movie-making process then he would". This is just one person voicing an opinion that it's difficult not to share when seeing Attack of the Clones. He has absolutely no conception of humanity. Of course I don't know George Lucas personally, but if I did I think that I would think that he is socially inept. If his real-life social interactions are the same as how he shows them in this movie, then there is something wrong with him. In Attack of the Clones he has somehow taken a group of very talented actors, and made them look like animated manakins. The class of Christopher Lee shows through this as, even in the face of such calamatous directing and script-writing, he still manages to deliver a powerful and eery performance as the Count Dooku. Overall I still enjoyed watching the movie, mainly I think because I am a die-hard Star Wars fan, but I couldn't help but cringe during every dialog. The love that was shown in the making of the first three Star Wars movies seems well and truly lost. The freshness of the relationship between Han Solo and Princess Leia is only a distant memory when we are forced to watch the ridiculously crass and predictable relationship of Anakin and Padme. Whereas the first three Star Wars films were made by a man who desperately wanted to put an idea into the world, the most recent two (and presumably the next one) will have been made by a man trying to squeeze a few extra millions out of an idea that should have been left as it was...