Great Movie!

Rating: 6/10 (31 May 2002)

George Lucas returns to his roots and produces the second best Star Wars movie overall (after The Empire Strikes Back). The action, adventure, sense of wonder and sense of humor which were noticeably absent from The Phantom Menace (except in parts) are all back with a vengeance. Thankfully, Jar Jar Binks screen time is limited, though oddly enough his time on screen still managed to be so awkward and hackneyed that it made me wince. By far, however, the biggest reason why AOTC cannot score higher than an 8 out 10 in this reviewer's mind is due to the idiotic dialogue between Amadala and Anakin during their love scenes. The scripting in these parts is absolutely horrible to the point that my date and I were literally laughing out loud during the scenes. In some movies if a scene doesn't go over right it can make you squirm or even feel a little embarrassed. The dialogue and, consequently, the acting in these love scenes was so bad that all we could do was shake our heads and laugh. From what we could tell, everyone else in the packed theater felt exactly the same way with several people giggling, shaking their heads, or simply resting their heads in their hands trying to hide their eyes. Lucas is a genius at times when it comes to dreaming up these far away locales and the action scenes in this film are incredible and very impressive. But he needs to face facts: the guy does not have even a simple grasp of what a love scene should sound like or how two people in love should talk to each other. Granted, we're talking about a distant galaxy where customs and speech patterns could realistically be quite different than ours, but that isn't the problem. The problem is that it is just CHEESEY. Regardless of anything else, you have to be able to appeal to the audience of today...and people today, for the most part, aren't going to take that kind of crap seriously. When Anakin says to Amadala, "I don't like sand...it's course...and it gets everywhere. It's not like you...you're everything that is soft - and smooth" it was all I could do to keep myself from literally rolling out of my seat. My girlfriend and I, along with the rest of the theater sat there slack-jawed that the dialogue was that cheesey. Believe me, there is a reason I have gone off on this one point for so long: it dropped an otherwise "almost perfect" movie down a couple of big notches. If Lucas had any humility and could recognize his weaknesses as a screen-writer he would have brought in some help to re-write those scenes and to try to form a real bond and romance between the two main characters. It would have made an otherwise very good, very entertaining movie nearly perfect.