Glossy and action packed, BUT abysmal delivery of the plot

Rating: 1/10 (1 June 2005)

The ships looked great. The action was great. The effects were great. To those aspects I would give 10/10, 9/10 and 10/10 respectively. But as everyone should know by now, most of what makes a good film is the plot and the script.
The biggest disappointment of all in this film is that the actual underlying plot is really good. How can a good plot be a disappointment you may ask? And my answer would be: When it's shoe-horned into a blockbuster so badly. So when someone who's had decades to work on the application of the plot, how could they have come up with this pile of amateurish drivel?
THE NEXT PARAGRAPH CONTAINS THE NEAREST THING TO A SPOILER, BUT NOT THAT CLOSE REALLY AS I'M REALLY VAGUE ABOUT IT. IF IN DOUBT THEN SKIP TO THE PARAGRAGH BELOW. THE ONE THAT BEGINS "Basically, ...". The seduction to the dark side could have sounded at least a little bit convincing. The very action that flicks the switch in Anakin is born out of a completely irrational act by someone supposedly completely rational. I would say more but I don't want this to be considered a spoiler.
Basically, the script is so bad that Natalie Portman (Padme) and Samuel L. Jackson (Mace Windu) struggle to sound credible throughout. This is fundamentally because contradictions hide round every corner, with people saying one thing and then suddenly changing their minds because the plot needs to go in another direction. This most commonly afflicts Padme, Mace and Anakin. On my ten minute train journey home, I thought up numerous ways the story could have been improved to better fit the plot. This shouldn't have been possible for me to do, when George Lucas has had more years than I had minutes! In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the script was almost as ill-fitting as Darth Vaders new suit. Let's face facts, David Prowse (original Darth Vader) was a giant of a man and Hayden Christensen (Anakin Skywalker) could spend a lifetime in the gym and still never borrow his clothes for a night on the town. There's a point in this film where my mind is inexorably drawn to a vision of Rick Moranis in the film 'Spaceballs'. The difference being that 'Revenge of the Sith' isn't supposed to be a parody of the original Star Wars films, while that's exactly what 'Spaceballs' is.
The hardest thing George Lucas had to accomplish was making a story that was good enough to keep us enthralled even when we knew where the plot had to end up. Unfortunately, the end feels totally rushed as they just throw in all the necessary bits in a flurry of facts at the end. And even these fact often contradict with the original films in many places. Lord of the Rings spent twenty odd minutes on accomplishing the ending properly, guiding the heroes down the paths they were then to take. Now I can see why it was so important not to squish the results of an epic into such a tiny slot at the end. Shoe-horned was my adjective at the start of this review and I still stand by that now.
Such a potential masterpiece ruined.