Better enjoyed if you know which flaws to expect

Rating: Null/10 (15 May 2002)

ATTACK OF THE CLONES is one of the most consistently dazzling movies I have seen in years, and it was probably an okay picture until it ended. Unlike EMPIRE, which closed on a cliffhanger or two, this movie didn't bother to become climactic before it simply stopped. It was much, much better the second time, but remains flawed in some big ways.
CLONES takes itself seriously from the start, a refreshing change from its Jar-Jar laden predecessor. Very little aims to be cute. It's the most political of these films. It would help to have this realized in a more dramatic fashion given its ultimate import to the story. Padme is believable as a Senator. Yoda is well developed as the head of the Jedi order. It's easy to understand why so many rely upon in him. He's a counselor, an effective general in battle, and he's pretty cool with his lightsaber, though he gets barely a minute of time with it. Luke Skywalker's whininess is clearly an inherited trait. Anakin is nothing if not petulant. He is portrayed as headstrong, arrogant, resentful and lacking anything resembling wisdom, but otherwise he doesn't even start down the dark path.
It's slow for a Star Wars movie. Transitions between scenes are labored. A final line of dialogue is said, the shot holds before the wipe to the next one, then there is a hold before the new dialogue starts. This may seem picky, but with 178 scenes - it adds up to a sluggish picture.
Action scenes lay limp. An asteroid field chase brings no concern about anyone hitting anything. The big ending battle with the colossal ships is quite grand, but also quite short for a climax. These sequences suffer from the consistent use of master shots, spectacular on their own, but not conveying progress in the battles. While this may seem realistic, it is also anonymous, structureless, and without drama. There is no urgency, no sense of goal, just spectacular, empty fighting. Scored gloomily, CLONES' action music sometimes has a beat, but still saps the energy right out of these scenes. John Williams seems to have forgotten how to score a heroic moment, or a victory. Listening to the CD, I just assumed that there weren't any, but there are, and they're diminished by the music.
While CLONES portrays a romance, it is not in the least way romantic. Anakin's attraction is immediate and intense. Padme's is neither. Her draw to Anakin is motivated only by the needs of the story. Many scripted personal moments have been left out of the film, and I think her character needed those to make this believable from both sides. Her eventual pronouncement of love is made with clumsiness - it's not sweet, it's kind of weird. Anakin's lengthy one on Naboo is earned, but Christiansen's woodenness makes it fall flat as well.
The dialogue could have used a once-over by someone who isn't afraid to correct George Lucas. "M'Lady" is said too frequently, and never comfortably. Anakin and Kenobi say each other's names repeatedly, and not naturally, because it's unnatural to do. Obi-Wan's sarcasm seems forced, and the buddy-picture dialogue plays flat. Things are also repeated within scenes. As Padme prepares to leave Coruscant, her handmaid jokes that the security guard will be safe with her around. A minute later Anakin makes the same reversal joke about Artoo being along with he and Padme. Also, jokes are sometimes made, including three awful, awful one-liners, not worthy of a low-rent Henny Youngman - made by C-3PO. I would almost trade these in for more of Jake Lloyd's "Yipee!"'s.
SPOILER TIME
A scene with Anakin's mother is too pat. She sees him, says, "Now... I am complete" and dies. This kind of thing happened in MENACE, but there was so much talk of the will of the force, that the deus-ex-machinas worked. This plays as melodrama.
The lightsaber duel is the least dramatic or exciting since the first Star Wars movie. EMPIRE added geography and drama to its duel. JEDI's duel was fierce, and pivotal. MENACE added the speed and acrobatics of real Jedi Knights. This one represents a regression. Dooku fights Obi-Wan, Anakin and Yoda each in turn. The fights with Anakin and Obi-Wan are shot like the duel in A NEW HOPE - close-ups with swords moving past the camera until Dooku gets the better of them. Yoda makes an entrance, and the two battle with lightning, then Yoda whips out the blade. His fighting style works for his size, but the skirmish is too brief to be relished before Dooku pulls the Distract Him By Endangering His Friends trick, and skirts away while Yoda saves our heroes.
Where other movies build to a climax, even MENACE, this one concludes with our heroes getting into, and then out of, an isolated mess. The Clone War begins, but that has no import to these specific characters in the moment, as would, say, Anakin's turning to the dark side. It's interesting politically, but politics play as backdrop. CLONES ended as would have EMPIRE if it had stopped just as the Millennium Falcon landed at Cloud City. It's not that the story isn't finished, or that the film isn't self-contained, it's that neither a climax nor a breaking point were reached. Even FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING ended at a clear chapter stop. CLONES seems to end more in the middle of a chapter, with a cut straight to a quick epilogue just for form.
END SPOILERS
The problem is not with what the filmmakers did, i.e. "focusing too much on the visuals". That effort cannot be faulted. It is a constant blessing, and it has nothing to do with this movie's problems. It is what they didn't do, fixing up the dialogue, tightening, emphasizing the important story elements, and including the moments that develop Padme's love of Anakin, as well as the political dialogue. These and building to a climax - these are the problems.