And the best actor award goes to... Yoda!

Rating: 7/10 (25 May 2002)

With 20 minutes of editing, this would have a been a great movie. Those 20 minutes of course would be the "romantic" scenes between Anikan Skywalker and Padme Amidala. My 7 seven year old son and his friends were just gagging at the existence of "mushy" scenes, while the adults were just embarrassed to be watching what was essentially a high school level performance. The audience in today's showing in Seattle reacted in the only sane way possible - they broke out laughing every time McGregor and Portman appeared in another silly romantic setting. What else can you do with a script that has Padme saying "she will not let it happen" (giving us a cruelly false sense of hope) and next is entertaining the puppy-love-struck Jedi by the fire in a very enticing dress.... And the Sound of Music scene?

[Contrast this mush with the Hans Solo/Princess Leia moment in the doorway of the shield generator on Endor - "I love you/I know you do" - and then she zaps the stormtrooper. And we all knew as much as we ever wanted to about their state of romance.]
Back to today - the action, the settings, the technology, chases, battles, scenery, and beasts was Star Wars at its best, lots of fun, exciting and dazzling. The development of the story line given the restrictions of the pre-quel concept was really well done. Christopher Lee was great as Dooku (he alone looked like he was having fun), but doesn't have enough a lot of air time. So the best actor of the movie award has to go to Frank Oz's Yoda which stole the end of the show, and made the entire movie worthwhile. If they could just loose those 20 minutes.....
One other caution for parents - there are some scenes whose violence and anger are personal and scary. My seven year old upped and left during the scene where Anikan finds his mother.
I give the movie 12 for the non-romatic bits, -4 for the romantic bits, for a score of 8. (And George, get a dialog doctor - FAST!)