Still disappointing.

Rating: 6/10 (7 January 2006)

After seeing some of the silly changes made to the Star Wars trilogy in the Special Edition, I knew that that the Phantom Menace was going to be seriously inferior to the original trilogy and that Lucas had lost his vision and was merely looking to tinker with the new special effects technology at his disposal. The exact same things can be said for the second of his prequels, the Attack of the Clones.
I was somewhat pleasantly surprised with the film. It was a significant improvement from the Phantom Menace and much of the unbearable silliness was absent from this one. It had something that passed for a plot and a few interesting characters.
However, this film did suffer from the same problems as Phantom Menace, though to a lesser degree in some areas. First, the acting was marginal and the dialogue terrible although not as silly as in Phantom. Next, the special effects were too squeaky-clean and pastel-like to be believable. Nothing had that "lived-in" look from the original trilogy. Finally, the story doesn't mesh with the original trilogy and there are too many gaping plot holes and connections made between characters in these films and the characters in the old ones to be believable.
This was a roughly hour and a half long advertisement for Star Wars action figures. If you go into this movie wanting to see anything but that you are going to be sorely disappointed.