George Lucas is a Genius!

Rating: 5/10 (5 April 2004)

By making Episode I horrendous, Lucas was able to lower the bar enough that Episode II HAD to be an improvement; and yet Attack of the Clones still left plenty of room for the series to peak in Episode III (2005).
And indeed Episode II is much better than The Phantom Menace. Just not by a lot.
First the plot. Attack of the Clones has a deliberate method of storytelling that I don't recall in the original trilogy. For example, before Amidala's remark that she heard Anakin having a nightmare, the audience must first be presented with a scene showing him groaning and moaning in bed. It's like connect-the-dots where the dots are lettered and numbered and there's a dot every centimeter. It occasionally feels patronizing, as if Lucas assumed the audience consists of 2nd graders.
And yet there were other times when I wished that Lucas had done more with certain scenes. For example, I wished he had extended Anakin's rampage against the Sandpeople; it would've offered thrilling entertainment and even some characterization.
The romance was quite hokey, and the script was generally forgettable. George Lucas knows how to make great star battles, but he knows JACK about romance, and boy does it show. The scenes between Anakin and Padme come off as cliched and awkward. I honestly think that Lucas should have tried a touch of of romantic comedy in the Anakin-Padme scenes.
Speaking of Anakin, Hayden Christenson is a much better actor than Jake Lloyd (he'd better be). I guess if we are to believe that a child as brilliant as Anakin would speak like a bad actor, then his stale monotone would carry over into adolescence and adulthood as well.

Another problem is the timeframe. These movies are supposed to take place one generation before the original trilogy. Yet the sets and props look more high-tech than the value-city toys of Episode IV. Furthermore, with all the effects they had at their disposal, I'd think they could have done SOMETHING to accommodate the bizarre aging of Anakin and Amidala. While Portman's character appears to have aged two weeks since Episode I, Anakin has morphed from toddler into full-grown adult, and a tall one at that.
Although the CGI was state of the art, it still looks inferior to live action in many respects. It seems that in the realm of digital effects, animating a rider upon the back of a creature especially poses a challenge. In many scenes featuring riders, the movements were choppy and looked like claymation. This was the same jerkiness I noticed in Lord of the Rings when a character jumped on top of an animated troll, and again in Harry Potter.
But the biggest flaw with the new Star Wars movies is the lack of lovable characters and the chemistry between them. In the original series, we had the wild, reckless Han Solo, the naive, idealistic, space-redneck Luke, the unwaveringly loyal, always-moaning Chewie, the serious, wise Obi-wan, the slightly snotty yet sensitive Leia, the digital bickering of the two droids, and then we had the wonderful scenes that resulted when their personalities clashed together and mixed into fun, entertaining, dramatic, memorable adventures.
Now in the new series, we have Obi-Wan, who is still serious, Anakin, who is supposed to be a wildchild but comes off as forced and serious, Padme, who is generally serious, and a bunch of jedi, who are deadly serious. You have all these characters standing around being serious, looking "cool" if you will, and this leaves any humor and color up to the droids, who do their best, and the slapstick antics of Jar-Jar, who thankfully is nearly absent in AoC. The end result is poor personality development and characters who are mildly interesting, but not particularly lovable or memorable.
Like Phantom, the sabre battles again were breath-taking and well-choreographed (or animated). However, as cool as it was seeing you-know-who kick butt, it still was not executed as well as the show-down between Darth Maul and Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan.
Finally, I thought it was funny how ultimately the entire fall and corruption of the Republic can be traced to Jar Jar Binks. Did Lucas do this on purpose to appease the Jar Jar haters out there?
All in all, I give AoC a 6 / 10, but I do look forward to seeing Episode III.