Sadly it lacks the "feeling" of the old Star Wars trilogy.

Rating: 5/10 (17 May 2002)

I saw "Attack of the Clones" hoping it would be a better movie than "The Phantom Menace" and I would have to say that it is, but that does not automatically make it a good Star Wars movie. "Attack of the Clones" suffers from big problems.
The story is great. We all know what eventually is going to happen to the characters and the plot in this movie makes a good job building a deeper understanding for why things will go that way. Too bad George Lucas is unable to tell it in an interesting way.
The screenplay poorly written. Much of the dialogue in this movie really bad, with some of the romantic lines being a real disaster. The love story never gets believable and it feels like we just have to accept it, without actually believe in it.
The acting performances are often flat though the banal lines doesn't exactly make it easy for the actors to do their job well. Hayden Christensen as Anakin manages really good with the physical acting, facial expressions and so on but has problems delivering the dialogue in a believable way. Natalie Portman as Amidala tries to make the most of her part but Lucas never really gave her a fair chance. Ewan McGregor does make a much better Obi-Was this time around, more relaxed then he ever was in `Phantom Menace'. The attempts at humour in `Attack of the Clones' are in about 90 percent of the time only embarrassing and the way they use R2 and C3PO is completely unforgivable.
The visual effects are at times perfect but just as often flawed. There are still problems with some of the character animation, and some of the blue screen work are way too obvious, especially for a movie of this calibre.
Some might say that the action is the strength of this movie, I disagree. Most of the action is no more than average. There are only two action sequences that I think works. One is the space ship battle between Obi-Wan and Jango Fett, which also show how visual effects can be used right. The other is the light sabre duel against Dooku in the end of the movie. This fight is actually one of real highlights even though it should have been a bit longer. Here we also get to see a new side of Master Yoda and I must admit that I had my doubts about how that would work. It actually turned out to be well handled and not as out of character as one would have thought. The main problem with most of the action is that Lucas never even try to make us care. Instead he just throws a lot of visual effects in our faces. Just the fact that you have a lot of Jedi's waving their light sabres doesn't make it good action. Especially not when the big Jedi battle is flawed by the blue screen effect. It's just so obvious that the actors never really hit anything, you can actually see that they try to act against some piece of tape in a studio environment and that really bothers me.
The music by John Williams works fine but there is just one new theme that sticks, the love theme. Williams is apparently not what he ones was but he makes it work using themes from the previous movies, thankfully.
To sum up my thoughts about `Attack of the Clones' I can say that it is a film that have the potential of being a great chapter of the Star Wars saga. The problem is that Lucas doesn't manage to use this potential. Yes it is a better movie than `Phantom Menace'. Much in the sense that this one lets you sit though it without having to be annoyed by most of what you see on screen but `Attack of the Clones' still doesn't deliver more than a few scenes that really works and that is what makes me sad. I see George Lucas himself as the big problem of the new Star Wars movies. It is so obvious that his talent lies neither in directing nor screenwriting. The only question is why he can't let competent people take care of writing and directing. That is how `Empire Strikes Back' and `Return of the Jedi' where made and those are the movies that made Star Wars to be the incredible adventure that it's supposed to be.

What did work in "Attack of the Clones? + The Story + Some Visual FX + The Music + Yoda
What did not work in "Attack of the Clones? - The Directing - The Dialogue - The Acting - The Humour - Some Visual FX - The Action