A Waste of Everything for Everybody

Rating: 2/10 (28 January 2003)

I've been a Star Wars fan ever since I was a baby, when I was shown the first movie theatrically. I've seen the original trilogy more times than I can count. While I was at the premiere of "Episode I", I was sorely disappointed, and after the high of seeing a new Star Wars movie wore off, I was even more so. So it was with great trepidation that I purchased my ticket for "Episode II." What greeted me was one of the worst films this side of "Mystery Science Theatre 3000."
While I've seen my share of bad films, very rarely have I actually had to suppress the urge to riot (the only other time was during a screening of "Heavy Metal"). If you don't know the story, here are the basics: Anakin Skywalker, who we all know will one day become the eeeeevil Darth Vader (Hayden Christensen), and his mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) are sent to guard now-Senator Amidala (Natalie Portman) from a bounty hunter. There are vehicle chases, monster battles, light sabre duels, and what I think was supposed to be a romantic interlude but came off like a commercial for feminine hygiene products.
Again, with amazing clarity, George Lucas has demonstrated that he is unable to direct anything with a pulse. We have a group of fine actors here (including Christopher Lee and Samuel L. Jackson) who all come off as wooden and lacking in any depth, although I think this may be Hayden Christensen's natural state of being. The plot is needlessly complex and illogical, and situations seem to exist only to bring about certain scenes that allow Lucas to say "Look what I can do! Aren't I cool?". The film displays an amount of fan service that would embarrass the animators at Go Nagai ("Cutey Honey", "Devil Lady"). And don't even mention the painful and stilted dialogue that makes me long for when Ed Wood was in his heyday.
And the special effects. Let's not forget those. How can we, when 80% of the movie is computer-generated, including most of the cast? Peter Jackson has proven that CGI effects CAN be incorporated seamlessly into a movie with a much smaller and less prestigious studio than Industrial Light & Magic (I dare anyone who's seen Gollum in "The Two Towers" to tell me Jar Jar Binks is better). And "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within" proved that digital actors can be even more expressive than some of the flesh-and-blood humans that Lucas directs, so there is no excuse for the static and uninspiring effects Lucas so lavishly fills his movie with.
Virtually nothing about this film works. Not the computer-generated Yoda, not the boy band-castoff looks of Hayden Christensen, not the derivative and painfully stale John Williams score (it's a sad state to be in when you rip off yourself), and certainly not Natalie Portman's costumes, which keep reminding us that she's now of legal age. Unfortunately, there are enough over-zealous fans of George Lucas out there to ensure that his movies make far more money than they deserve to, encouraging him to make more and more of these mindless, overblown faux-mythological epics.
All in all, this experience of this movie is little more than watching a friend play a video game to show you all the cool things in it, but all you want to do is go out to dinner. I give the movie 2 out of 10, mainly because it's only slightly easier to watch than "Battlefield Earth."