Bored, boring, boringest

Rating: Null/10 (8 July 2002)

I enjoyed Ep 1. but Ep II left me completely cold and disinterested. The CG visuals are superb - better than any previous Star Wars. Quite possibly better than any other film ever made, in fact. This makes Final Fantasy look like a hand-drawn flickbook.
But the tragedy of the film is that it's all just eye-candy. The effects are so good it's possible to take them for granted. You'll believe totally in a world of colliding asteroids, huge starships, planet-englobing cities, and the whole Star Wars universe enchilada.
What you don't do is care, because all that visual genius is used in the most uncreative, plodding and predictable ways. Coruscant looks like New York, only with flying cars. There's even a yawnsome diner scene. And Blade Runner style references - twenty years too late. (In fact Lucas should take a few tips from Ridley.)
The clone maker's planet looks like something out of Star Trek: Voyager on a bad script day.
And Geonosis is just Mordor with anti-gravity. The final insult is Christoper Lee as an evil count. Let me think now - haven't we seen him play a similar role before somewhere?
Christensen pouts all the way through. But his acting is down in the bargain basement - if he were any more wooden you could build furniture out of him. The plot really needed a strong lead - someone with the charisma and presence of Patrick Stewart or Sean Connery, only younger. But Christensen comes over like a mummy's boy James Dean wannabe instead of the elemental raging passionate force the role called for.
Portman simmers with a rather aloof and costume-driven sex appeal, has a nice side line in funky back-less dresses, and doesn't do much apart from look appealingly strokable and princess-like. But something is badly wrong in the scenes between her and Christensen - you'll find more interesting chemistry in a home pregnancy testing kit.
With an embarassingly bad script, going-through-the-motions acting, insipid leads and no plot twists to speak of - it's just boring.

The real problem is that there's something creepy about the whole project now. Lucas is like a ten year old that refuses to grow up and face the complications of the adult world. That child-like simplicity worked like a charm in the earlier films. But here all it's doing is keeping the series on life support. It's Saturday matinee viewing in a world where Saturday matinee viewing hasn't been a big draw since forever. Even kid-level audiences are more sophisticated today.
What the world wanted was humour, involvement, strong characters, passion, depth, surprise, novelty, plot twists, and dialogue that doesn't make you wince.
What it got was some great visuals. And no soul at all.