A Truly Fantastic Final Act At The Expense of The Rest of The Film

Rating: 6/10 (30 December 2016)

Attack of The Clones is generally considered by most to be the worst Star Wars film and overall just a bad film and while I personally wouldn't go that far I think this is an incredibly flawed film that has a few redeeming features mainly to do with the final 30 minutes. This last act is truly fantastic, not only will an Star Wars fan take joy in seeing the true power of the Jedi but it's also just entertaining, the massive battle that has been built up has been extremely well executed and truly gave us a sense of the power of these two opposing forces. The final lightsaber battle of the film while not very intense internally is still fairly well choreographed and made for a somewhat epic conclusion, all the action sequences are very well done I just wish there had been more of them. The performances in this film are a bit of a mixed bad but the one undeniable positive of this entire trilogy is Ewan McGregor as Obi Wan Kenobi, he just brings a wise nature yet vulnerability to this already iconic character not only in this film but the trilogy as a whole. However this film still has its fair share of flaws. For one while the last act is riveting and engaging the first two are dull and drab, just dialogue heavy exposition with no real heart or intensity to it, the characters are not built up in any way and the villains are given no motivation or backstory making giving them no really presence. The central romance in this movie just simply does not work mainly because the two actors have very little chemistry due to the poor dialogue and script. Green Screen environments are used frequently in this film and it always shows and comes across as incredibly fake. I really don't like criticising performances but here I have too Hayden Christensen was truly bad in this film, he never really embodied Anakin as a complex character but mainly as just a whiny brat that did not make for a compelling protagonist. This film also sets up some very good ideas or plot lines that are either brushed over or all but forgotten about and came across as lazy at times.
Attack of The Clones in my opinion is not an awful movie but far from a great one, while the actual Attack of The Clones itself is very well done the rest of the film has poor characters and dialogue, it fails to be compelling and wastes very good actors that could have made for potentially engaging characters. Despite its serious flaws I still consider this film to be at least a marginal improvement over The Phantom Menace.
68%/B-