...and our standards go ever lower....

Rating: 1/10 (23 May 2002)

As far as how Episode II compares to Episode I, yeah, this IS better, but that ain't saying much.
When you go to see a Star Wars movie/marketing vehicle, you know what you're going to get; lame dialogue, a thin-to-nonexistent plotline, 2-dimensional characters (at best), and....oh yeah; LOTS and LOTS of CGI. I'll be honest; the movie LOOKS great. The city in which Obi-Wan and Anakin chase the bounty hunter looks like a cleaned-up Blade Runner set. The chase through the asteroid field? Very cool. And Yoda? I had to admit, that was the most entertaining part of the whole movie.
But people, don't you think George could spend a little time coming up with a decent script? Everyone in this movie is so solemn and dull. We're definitely supposed to understand that "the peace of the galaxy hangs in the balance" of these people and events. It is rammed down your throat; this stuff that's happening is a very big deal. Fine. Now where's the story? There isn't one. My first reaction is to blame the actors (with the exception of Ewan, who IS growing into a decent Obi-Wan) for their lifeless dialogue, but I quickly remembered that they can only do so much with what they're given. The dialogue is George's fault. There are about 6 times during the movie when the crowd in the theater with me laughed in unison. They were times when a character (doesn't matter which one; they're all zombies) uttered a phrase that had a small amount of personality to it. When Obi-Wan begins to slide down this dome, he becomes slightly worried and says, "Not good." In any other movie, this would be a throwaway line and not worthy of noting, but here it's a thigh-slappin zinger. George wrote bad dialogue in the first Star Wars flick (just ask the actors who had to deliver it; they've SAID the writing was clunky), and he hasn't gotten much better.
A movie should be about a STORY, not an ad for a visual effects company, and that's what this is. The saddest part is that the hardcore fans out there feel obligated to rave about anything George throws up on the screen. These characters are not particularly interesting, they're not funny, they have no depth, and I couldn't give a rat's ass if they all got blown to pieces by the Empire's soon-to-be-completed Ultimate Weapon. And if a movie gives you characters with whom you cannot identify and about whom you cannot bring yourself to care, then the movie has failed. THIS MOVIE FAILS. Not as badly as the last one (or the one before that, which at least had some familiar faces going for it), but it still fails.
I said the saddest part was that the hardcore fans trip over themselves trying to say how great the movie is. (I notice that Episode II is ranked at #121 on the imdb list; pathetic.) I take that back; the saddest thing is how little George Lucas cares for the fans who put him where he is in the first place. He owes them much, much more than this.