Best Animated Film of the Year!

Rating: Null/10 (29 May 2002)

I'm not really being a smartass when I say that "Episode II" could qualify as the best animated film of the year. I feel that one of its major flaws is that it has people at all! Honestly, pay attention to the parts with actual humans in them--the actors in Lucas' film stand out against their computer-created environments almost as obviously as the ones in "The Golden Voyage of Sinbad."
Well, maybe I'm being a little bit of a smartass by claiming "Episode II" could qualify as the year's best cartoon--the computer environments and animation really aren't even as convincing as those in "Stuart Little." This is mainly due to overkill--I mean, there wasn't a single "set" in the film that wasn't absolutely massive. Distractingly so. And when Lucas' characters are replaced, in long shots, by computer animated versions of themselves, they move in that unnaturally smooth, underwater way that computer-game characters do (also one of the few flaws in this year's "Spiderman"). This lack of "flesh actor time" is no huge loss, however--Hayden Christiansen and Christopher Lee give the only real performances in the movie, anyway.
On the positive side, even though the backgrounds are invariably busy and distractingly mammoth, the actual action taking place is wonderfully easy-to follow. Lucas' simple editing and framing, influenced by action serials of the 1930s and 40s is a refreshing change from the incomprehensible action sequences in recent action flicks like "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider." For the most part, Lucas just pulls back to a medium shot with the major participants in full view, and has them do their (often computerized) thing.
If only he could take a lesson from himself and simplify his epics instead of making them ever larger and more scattershot. He needs to pull in the reins on the FX department and concentrate making movies instead of big-screen, non-interactive videogames.