Star Wars is back... but there's still an element or two missing

Rating: 5/10 (16 May 2002)

Well, so much for Lucas losing his touch.
Star Wars is back, and this is a film worthy of the name, unlike Episode 1. The visual tones are dramatically darker and the environments are totally new to the series. The urban planet of Coruscant has a futuristic, dark urban tone that is amazing. There's plenty of new aliens and environments, and most of them are visual feasts.
Without giving away the plot, it is vastly different than any other SW movie, and despite some parallels to the original trilogy, much more original than Ep 1.
Jar-Jar's role is reduced to five minutes tops, and there's absolutely nothing in this movie aimed for kids. There's even some much more scantily clad women in Corsucant, and Natalie Portman, is, shall we say, pretty cold and wearing a tight white dress in one scene if you know what I mean. The 20-somethings will jump for joy at this one.
Unfortunately, there are some flaws with the movie. The first is the visual FX, while mind-blowing most of the time, they get pretty overdone in the last 30 minutes or so of the movie and some pretty fake-looking shots have snuck in (it looks like Jedi Knight, the computer game). Also a minor problem is Yoda (now CG), who looks pretty good in normal shots but looks like Shrek in the closeups, which is kinda jarring.
The dialogue is not as bad as some reviewers have made it out to be, nor the performances of Natalie and Hayden as wooden. The love scenes are somewhat forced and hit and miss, but they're certainly better than a total dud like Pearl Harbor. Thankfully it doesn't have to carry the movie by itself.
The script is much like that and could have benefitted from a rewrite or two more, but it is vastly improved from Episode 1. Even when the lines are awkard, the point gets across.
Hayden as Anakin turns in a pretty good performance at times with some dramatic scenes (as good as anyone in the previous movies). At times he's just alright. Portman isn't given as much as she needs but is serviceable. The rest of the cast all turn in great performances, especially Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi. The only problem is, some of the characters like Padme or Mace Windu aren't given enough development so that we root for them like the crew in the original trilogy. This may be an unavoidable flaw of the prequels.
The ending is also the most unsatisfying of any movie in the series, even moreso than ESB.
John Williams' score is good but lacking in new themes (besides the great love theme).
The action sequences are amazing, there's lots of fighting and some of the witty dialogue and swashbuckling that made the first three films so great is back. The story has some nice twists, turns, and tie-ins to the original films and is very interesting, and there's plenty of surprises from the characters.
Overall, a great improvement of a movie that is probably better than ROTJ and just below the first two installments of Star Wars. It still is a flawed movie in a couple ways, but Lucas has fixed most of the kinks to make it a really fun ride.
8/10