I am thankful that I was one of the first in the world to see this.

Rating: 7/10 (15 May 2002)

Star Wars Episode 2 - Attack of the Clones has reawakened the joy of Star Wars in me. I live in New Zealand and we were favoured by the time zones, to see the world premiere of this before the rest of the world.
I can only image what it was like to see the advances in technology in the original Star Wars film (afterwards renamed Episode IV - A New Hope), but I feel that this was a similar leap in audio visual entertainment. Industrial Light and Magic have outdone themselves yet again, though I am beginning to feel that Skywalker Sound is giving the sound effects a bit too much of a sameness... when will R2 say something other than the soundbites from the original movies?
The backgrounds are stunning and the plot I found was a little easier to follow than the previous episode. I don't know whether this is because the film is structured better or because characters that we are being introduced to are ones that have already been involved in later episodes. I certainly get the feeling that chunks of the Star Wars "jigsaw puzzle" are coming into place.
Fans will notice that a lot of dialog is delivered in similar fashion as the other films we have already seen; some of Amidala's lines are reminiscent of things that Leia says in Return of the Jedi, and we hear the usual verbal jousting... "join me and together we will..." etc. This seems to follow Lucas's intent that everything "rhyme". Themes and constructs are mirrored throughout the Star Wars story to give a semblance of wholeness. I don't think it's cheesy, but some may disagree.
Speaking of cheese, many critics will be happy to know that the role of Jar-Jar Binks is peripheral at most, and when we do see him he is being less of a twit.
It's about time we saw Master Yoda in action. We've heard people rant and rave about how he's so powerful, and you'll be happy to know that we finally see a slice of what he is capable of.
My only problem and I don't know if it is a world wide one was that the film looked grainy (I guess I'll have to see it a few more times to see whether or not it was just the theatre that I was at ^_^).
Throw in some gorgeous critters, more highspeed chase scenes that you can shake a stick at and light sabers everywhere and you have a high paced romp that is leaving me (at least) primed for the next installment.