Still not good enough

Rating: 5/10 (2 February 2005)

From the original trilogy to Episode 1: The Phantom Menace this film series has become a roller-coaster of quality. The original trilogy is among my all-time favorites while "The Phantom Menace" is one of the greatest disappointments i have ever had when it comes to movies.
Some years have passed since the events in "The Phantom Menace". Anakin Skywalker has grown and is now training to soon become a Jedi himself. He and Padmé have a secret romance while he is also acting as her bodyguard. There is trouble in the Republic though as separatists are challenging the senate. This causes some worries because there are not enough Jedi to defend the republic against outright confrontation.
I can start by saying that this is a clear improvement on "The Phantom Menace". Everything is better. The movie still looks like a video game, but a better quality video game... And the pacing is a lot better. There are no scenes like the 20 minute pod race in "The Phantom Menace" to completely kill the movie. What still strikes me as abominable though is the casting. Who had the "bright" idea to cast Hayden Christensen as Anakin?! There has to be thousands of actors in the right age group that can perform better than him. He sounds like an obstinate child every time he says something. Pathetic! What i feel is still missing is the magic. The little thing the original trilogy had that made it work so beautifully even when it was quite silly (i mean come on, midgets in bear-suits?!). Unfortunately this movie is missing that, and when a scene is silly it has no redeeming features. What the "magic" does is make the whole worth more than the sum of it's parts. And i'm still waiting for that to happen.
That said, this is still quite entertaining. And i guess it would be a quite decent sci-fi movie if it didn't have the words "Star Wars" in the title. But since it DOES have those words, it still falls short of my expectations. I need something better than this. It still shames the original trilogy, and the rating can never be higher than 5/10.