'This is not the film you are looking for...!'

Rating: Null/10 (19 January 2006)

Of the three prequels this is, without a doubt, the most visually impressive. Like many recent fantasy films, however, it uses an abundance of (often quite obvious) CGI because it can rather than because it should. It becomes, therefore, quite exhausting to watch. The performances are, almost without exception, utterly dreadful.
Natalie Portman is a very good actress, when she has the right script. No-one has the right script, here. She's left to stand around on a succession of balconies (with increasingly outlandish hair-dos) looking tearful and coming out with such wooden lines as "I don't know you any more!" "We used to talk!", etc., etc., ad nauseum. Ewan MacGregor looks alternately bored or mildly constipated. Hayden Christiansen wins the Mark Hamill Emotes-Like-A-Chest-Of-Drawers Award for the second film running. This film  the whole prequel trilogy, in fact  hangs on us caring about Anakin's fall to the Dark Side, and his becoming Darth Vader. We don't. The setting-up of characters and incidents recognisable from the first films becomes tiresome  right down to the wiping of C3PO's memory (he's built by young Anakin in 'The Phantom Menace', but has no knowledge of Anakin, Obi-Wan or anyone else he encounters in 'Star Wars').
Most disappointing is the first image of Vader in full regalia. Anakin's burned and dismembered body is surgically installed into his suit and respiratorapparently with his cape already attached! He then breaks free from the manacles which secure him to the surgeons' slab and lurches around like Boris Karloff in 'Frankenstein' yelling "Noooooooooo!"
Bad. Not as bad as the first two prequels, but still seriously duff.
Nice music, thougheven if we have heard it all before.
Some of the scary bits are likely to frighten kids in ways the earlier prequels didn't. Hopefully that'll diminish Lucasfilm's toy-revenues and encourage all concerned to sit down and think up something original.