Alas, the thrill is gone

Rating: Null/10 (2 June 2002)

First it was to be twelve films, then nine, now six. I saw the first Star Wars movie exactly half a lifetime ago. I know George Lucas, when he regards his first Star Wars film, Episode IV: A New Hope, is conscious mainly of what he sees as its shortcomings. But despite a defective plot, clunky dialogue and visual effects light-years behind the new series of films, back in 1977 it was fresh and astonishing, far more so than Episodes I and II. Now everyone knows what is possible with CGI and expects to see dazzling visual effects. And Episode II delivers. Alas, the pedestrian plot and banal dialogue are not enough to lift the film above the flashiness of the visual effects. In fact, the effects are SO dazzling that they seem cartoonish: Everything is so fast-paced and so much is happening on the screen at once that it is difficult to appreciate the spectacle. The gladiatorial sequence near the end is a triumph of special effects, but they are too reminiscent of the recent film `Gladiator'. And there is still the very annoying way Lucas's characters manage to come through carnage and conflagration unscathed so that they can sustain just the right injuries during a crucial plot twist.
Nevertheless, the film is enjoyable in many ways. It is not so much exciting as satisfying to watch the story finally sweep back around to connect to Luke, Leia and Vader. One wonders if the whole business with the clones was part of Lucas's grand plan from the start, or whether it grew out of the throwaway remark made by Leia in Episode IV about how Obi-Wan Kenobi served her father (now revealed to be her stepfather, Bail Organa, played by Jimmy Smits) in the Clone Wars. One is reminded of J.R.R. Tolkien's revelation that The Lord of the Rings was not part of a grand literary plan; rather, when he set out to write "more about the hobbit," using the Ring as the link was simply the "inevitable choice".
Ewan MacGregor is just right as young Obi-Wan Kenobi, but his opportunities to impress on the screen are frustratingly limited. Rather than mature into a dominant character, in Episode II Obi-Wan mainly serves as a perpetually griping, rather fatuous father figure to the impetuous young Anikin Skywalker. Hayden Christensen has a jawline that Dick Tracy would envy, but his flat voice and poor diction detract from his performance, and his inexperience and youth as an actor show. Natalie Portman is a beautiful young lady, but her fluty monotone voice lacks character and is distracting. One wishes for tomboy-tough Carrie Fisher as Leia Organa. And Portman seemed to spend most of the film trying to keep her head balanced under Padmé's absurd hairdos.
Christopher Lee is great as the ridiculously named Dooku. It is fitting that he appears in a Star Wars movie as a villain, like his old crony of so many horror films, Peter Cushing, who played Governor Tarkin in Episode IV. For the first time, Yoda is not a puppet but a CGI character, and his lightsaber duel with Dooku is one of the high points of the film. Ian McDiarmid is underappreciated as the main villain at the bottom of it all. Praise goes to Lucas for casting the great Maori actor Temuera Morrison as Jango Fett. Morrison turned in an Oscar-caliber performance in the New Zealand film "Once Were Warriors," and as a reward he had maybe 2 minutes of screen time as a pirate in "Six Days Seven Nights." In Episode I, the wonderful Swedish actress Pernilla August did her best to flesh out a character who is really a mere sketch, Shmi Skywalker, Anikin's mother, and in fact she is so beautiful and talented that she stole scenes from the other actors. In Episode II, all she gets is an appallingly maudlin death scene right out of a grade-Z tear-jerker, probably the weakest scene in the film. Jar Jar Binks, Star Wars's answer to Stepin Fetchit, is on screen only briefly, thank goodness, because a little Jar Jar goes a long way. Ditto for Watto, who looks, sounds and acts unsettlingly and unhappily like the caricatures of Jews the Nazis used in their anti-Semitic hate propaganda. Samuel L. Jackson is always great, but Mace Windu so far is also one-dimensional, serving mainly to advance the plot when necessary. Lucas also made a small but annoying mistake that any film-school student knows to avoid: He prominently featured the gorgeous Rose Byrne as Dormé in early scenes with Senator Amidala. Then, after we'd noticed her and wondered who she was, he did nothing with her; she disappeared.
As everyone knows by now, "Attack of the Clones" was not "filmed" but rather digitally recorded. I saw the movie in the film-transfer version. Some have complained about the inferior picture quality in these cases. I did not notice any degradation of picture quality; rather, it was the sound that was poor: It was muddy and often distorted, especially in scenes with both dialogue and music.