Good!...(But Anakin's a Brat!)

Rating: Null/10 (17 May 2002)

The biggest gripe I had with this movie was Hayden Christensen's performance, coupled with the way his character was written. Instead of Anakin being portrayed as a 20 year-old 'seemingly' mature young man struggling inside with his own 'dark' issues, he comes across as a 15 year-old brat whose voice hasn't changed yet. His 10 year old Phantom Menace counterpart was more mature! Since when is having temper tantrums considered to be an attractive quality? When he yelled, 'It's all Obi-Wan's fault!' I was like, 'What! OK, I've had enough of him. He needs a kick in the pants!', but they just had Padme fall for him even harder, which is totally beyond me. I know Hayden is 21 years old in real life, but he is a very young looking 21. He looks like he just got out of the 9th grade. They needed someone who looked older and could be more believable as a romantic lead and they should have written less hissy fits into the storyline (or how about no hissy fits at all?)....
OK, with THAT out of the way, AOTC was far and beyond better than TPM. Now THIS was a prequel! The storyline was good! (except for the aforementioned of course). I followed what was going on, and more importantly, I actually *cared* about what was going on! Without giving anything away, the biggest highlights of this movie (in no particular order) were: (1)Seeing where the Clones came from, (2)Watching Darth Sidious' strategy to rid the galaxy of the Jedi unfold and (3)Seeing the beginnings of some of the supporting actors from the sequels. That was great! The dialogue was cheesy, but I was expecting that. The special effects were amazing, although halfway through the movie, I think I began to take them for granted, which may be a good thing after all, since that means they were very believable. Oh! and how can I forget YODA! YODA! YODA! He completely *stole* the movie right out from under the live actors. He was unreal! I was apprehensive about him being CGI instead of the lovable puppet, but I forgot about that old piece of rubber as soon as I saw Yoda doing what he did in that movie! Because he was CGI, he could actually be a main character. Man, he was all over the place, literally! And as a woman, I must throw this little sidepoint in: Padme's costumes were absolutely stunning! If the costume designer doesn't win the Oscar next spring, it's a travesty!
I still think The Empire Strikes Back is the best of the Star Wars movies, but AOTC is up there with Return of the Jedi, in my opinion. I would give it 3 and 3/4 out of 5 stars. If the whole Anakin thing would have been better, I would have given it a 5.