A Visual Headache

Rating: 5/10 (8 June 2002)

There are a couple lessons to be learned from watching 'Attack of the Clones.' Lesson #1: George Lucas used a new digital system, instead of film, and the results were satisfactory.
Lesson #2: The imagination of George Lucas works well, but when he has the technology to create the things he truly wants, he sacrifices in other areas like interesting characters and situations.
When I went to this film, I took my three young kids. My 7-year-old son really summed up the picture as we were exiting the theater: When asked what he thought of the movie, his reply was, 'I really liked the ships in it!'
You know what? He was right. The characters were bland, and the action sequences are very quickly becoming a Star Wars cliché.
Visually, Lucas has overloaded the movie. There are so many things going on in the frame that they are very distracting. It is difficult to pay attention to dialogue when there are hundreds of ships flying through the air, or thousands of droids and clones shooting at each other.
The digitally created Yoda is fun, but there were times when I was even under-whelmed by it. He flips, he fights, and moves like a true action hero, but when it is over, he picks up his little walking stick and starts to limp away. Is this just an act on his part for bogus sympathy?
With the younger Obi-Wan Kenobi as one of the leads, he doesn't quite carry the movie enough. The young actor (Hayden Christensen) playing Anakin makes a nice attempt, but there is almost no chemistry between him and Amadala.
Yes, George Lucas pulls out all of the stops to make something interesting to look at, but it fails in the end. Practically every frame of this picture has some computer-generated portion added, but too much is still too much. The grotesque aliens, who grunt, click, or waddle their way along, and the goofy robots and ships that populate a lot of the screen, are more than just distractions. They can be categorized in one word:
ABSURD.
It is always my preferred method to rate a film using a four-star system. Well, 'Clones' gets only '**'. It is sad to say that Lucas had created his worst 'Star Wars'.
Recently, it was announced that another 'Indiana Jones' film will be coming our way. I honestly hope that Lucas does not try to load it up with all visuals like he has in these last two 'Star Wars' films. If he does, he is bound to disappoint many.