it's not even the good kind of stupid

Rating: 3/10 (11 June 2002)

At least the Phantom Menace has the entertaining bit where Ewan McGregor and Liam Neeson fight Darth Maul in a superbly choreographed saber battle. AofC has some old dude fighting a weightless digital muppet. And the rest of the saber battles were awful too. It was mostly people in elaborate costumes striking poses while animation ran into their animated swords.
The music almost rises to the level of a Bombay musical - every corny moment is scored with horns giving musical cues. Overdone music is pretty standard for Lucas and Spielburg films, but this time it never frickin stopped!
The acting is wooden when not awful. The writing is deplorable. I wish I could wish I hadn't ever wished to here what Darth Vader might have wished for when he was wishing on his wishes. The pacing is as bad as the Phantom Menace. Maybe I'm just spoiled, but special effects alone don't do it for me anymore. I can see where the actors have reached the edge of the blue screen and it breaks the illusion every time for me. I care less about how Vader became Vader than I would have ever thought possible.
One especially dismaying thing is the number of action figures. It used to be the case that you'd go by Toys R Us and say `wow, I can't believe they actually made an action figure of that shot where Han's shirt got ripped and he picked up the Falcon's doo-hickey energizer.' Throughout AofC I kept noting how often characters changed outfits and how many utterly useless characters wandered into the frame and contributed nothing. I don't begrudge Lucas his empire of molded plastic figures, but, for heaven's sake, there ought to be at least one character in these films worth caring about before he makes so much room for action figures.
Ewan McGregor is a very cool Obi Wan. Sucks that his character is stuck being a schoolmarm.