I Should Have Stayed Home And Watched The Empire Strikes Back

Rating: Null/10 (17 May 2002)

Okay, first things first: Attack of the Clones is a definite improvement over The Phantom Menace. Jar Jar Binks, not in movie much is. Special effects, good they are. But script, very bad it is still.
Pardon the Yoda-speak please; it's just been a long day of trying to get it out of my head. In fact, Yoda is one of the main high points in the latest installment of George Lucas' space saga, his facial expressions and movement utterly realistic even though he is now CGI instead of a good old fashioned hand puppet. But you must admit, it's kind of sad when a computer generated special effect outperforms most of the actors in a movie.
We'll get to those actors later. Clones, set ten years after the much-maligned Menace, concerns a really bad guy named Count Dooku (the brilliant Christopher Lee) who may or may not be plotting the creation of a huge robot army to overthrow the Republic. The plot is discovered after an attempt to assassinate Senator Amidala (Natalie Portman) goes awry, and leads to two main storylines - the tracking of the assassin by Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and the blossoming of a forbidden love affair between Amidala and Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christenson), whom you may recall is destined to become the evil Darth Vader in Episode III.
The plot is a refreshing dose of simplicity after the way too convoluted Menace, with its' seemingly never-ending babbling about interstellar trade violations and such, but Lucas fails to do a whole lot with the obvious potential here. The movies' biggest problem is his stunningly inept handling of the love story, which is every bit as groan-inducing as the googly eyes made by Ben Affleck and Kate Beckinsdale in Pearl Harbor. To be sure, no one ever goes to these things for the love story anyway, but if it's a required element of the movie due to the plot's development in the second trilogy, couldn't an effort have been made to make it a little less eye-rolling of an affair? Christenson plays Anakin as a spoiled brat, with lines like "Master doesn't understand, he's too critical, blah blah blah". Cry me a river. It's never clear what exactly Amidala sees in the perpetually whiny Anakin, so when she professes late in the film, "I truly, deeply love you", you have to ask "why?" Lucas stages their scenes together with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the head, and it's hard to see why he couldn't grasp that lines like "I am haunted by the kiss you never should have given me" or "You are in my very soul, tormenting me" are more likely to induce laughter than heartstring-plucking for any viewer over ten years old. This is bad, because if we don't buy the story at the center of the movie, then all the other gears of the plot grinding away just seem like so much superfluous baggage.
The movie's other story, involving the tracking of the assassin by Kenobi, is handled with considerably more élan, probably because Lucas is much more at home with the action-oriented aspects of the story, but also because McGregor actually manages to bring his character to life. His mannerisms and speech patterns uncannily resemble those of Sir Alec Guinness, and he also has quite a few of the movie's best lines. If Lucas had allowed the movie to center more on him, there might have really been something here. But the plot requires focus on Amidala and Anakin, ironically the movie's weakest link by far.
Lucas has far more luck with the movies' action sequences, which are generally top-notch and staged with exhilarating flair. Clones is the first movie to be shot on digital media exclusively, and to be sure, it looks great. The implementation of the computer generated effects are totally seamless, and the sets and costumes look spectacular. But he seems to have totally lost his touch with actors. Christenson pouts and complains and generally comes off like an angry member of N-Sync, while Portman has lost the distracting hairdos and makeup (as well as the faux Brit accent) that constricted her in Menace but is no more of an interesting character for the effort. How Lucas managed to make an actor as great as Samuel L. Jackson so totally devoid of interest is beyond me. In fact, pretty much everybody walks through this thing like they're on sedatives except Lee as the evil Count Dooku, who has a lot of fun hamming it up, and McGregor, who is lively and charismatic as Obi-Wan.
Not that there isn't some fun to be had. Just discovering the backstories of some of the series' most famous characters, like bounty hunter Boba Fett, carry their own built-in charge. And those action scenes are truly a wonder to behold. But what's missing here is the sense that the movie understands and appreciates its' own b-movie, Saturday matinee roots and doesn't take itself too seriously. Instead of light, brisk, and fun, it's slow, ponderous, and blah. More like Star Chores than Star Wars. - Gene Hoke