A Pretty Average Movie, Not Bad, Not Good

Rating: 6/10 (30 December 2015)

I was raised with Star Wars, all six of them, and loved each one. Since the release of the new movie, I thought it was about time I revisited the movies before I went and saw the new one. I'm somewhat happy to say that the second prequel has held up for the most part.
Unlike the Phantom Menace, which was pretty bad this time watching it, Attack of the Clones is much better. One of the biggest struggles of the first movie seemed to be in finding good actors. In the second installment we get much better ones. The acting is, although not fantastic, a vast improvement of the first one. Its very average and sometimes a little over the top, which I know is the style George Lucas was going for. Although it could be really cheesy at times, and the over the top acting felt fake and sometimes out of place, it was easy to look past and enjoy the film for what it was.
The plot is, as I suspected, better than I remember. It's much more political, and is actually pretty interesting, more so than the first one. Although I'm not particularly fond of the whole "let's just go to war to solve all our problems" scenario, it certainly is more entertaining then negotiating.
The characters were more focused on this time around. They were good for the most part. Not bad, but not great either. Anakin himself often seemed disinterested, but I assume that was just his acting ability.
The CGI effects weren't always good. It was clear what was more focused on and what wasn't. I know that all the clones were CGI, but I felt like that was understandable and didn't really take away from the movie. Sure, sometimes, it was blatantly obviously that they were fake, but sometimes they looked real enough for you to believe them. I still wish there had been at least a few real clones, as it would have made the movie look a little better, but it's really not a big deal to me at all and I don't see why people seem to get so mad about it.
Overall Attack of the Clones is just an average movie. Nothing particularly special about it. Not a bad movie, but not a good one either. I still enjoyed it, despite it not being that well-done. In the end I would only recommend this movie if you were really interested in it, or if you had already watched the Phantom Menace and wanted to continue.