Thank goodness we only paid $2

Rating: 2/10 (10 June 2005)

I will say this for Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith...it wasn't as bad as Attack of the Clones. Having said that, nothing can get much worse than AOTC. Revenge of the Sith improves on storytelling a little bit, but the extremely poor acting and overwhelmingly ridiculous "special effects" made this seem less like a film and more like a boring video game. Watching someone else play Sonic the Hedgehog is more entertaining.
We were all excited to see Anakin finally switch to the Dark Side, but Lucas left us scratching our heads, thinking "Huh?" The scary Darth Vader in the original trilogy is born of a whiny brat that wanted to be a Jedi Master before everyone else and had a temper tantrum? Oh wait, there was also that possibility of Padme dying. I wasn't impressed. First off, I see no reason for Anakin and Padme to be in love. They have nothing in common, their relationship was trite in AOTC and it doesn't help that there is no chemistry between Hayden and Natalie. Watching their romantic scenes, if you could call them that, makes me long for Han Solo and Princess Leia.
I was expecting Ian McDiarmaid to be the powerhouse in this film. Meh. He was not really believable in "seducing" Anakin to the Dark Side. It was kind of like strangers luring little kids with puppies and candy. At times it seemed like he was advertising the Dark Side like a phone solicitor: hello, would you like a mortgage? Hello, the dark side will solve all your problems. The other villains were really boring too. General Grievous was pointless, like Christopher Lee in AOTC. These are sorry excuses for Darth Maul. With Darth Maul we had this cool aura of mystery and one of the best lightsaber duels in the Star Wars saga (even if the character was pathetically underused). In AOTC and ROTS, we have Christopher Lee-for-the-sake-of-having-Christopher Lee-in-our-movie. Now we have a CGI droid who could not have been more campy if he had been voiced by Hans Conreid or Jim Cummings, complete with a bad case of consumption. Doesn't sound like fun to me.
I've heard a lot of people lying about how dark and violent it is. Meh. Didn't feel really bad for the little kids as Anakin killing little kids was unbelievable anyway. Wasn't terribly sorry for the older Jedi since the only ones you get to know were Yoda and Obi-Won. Who cares about Ki-Ai-Mundi and Ayla Secura? The only people I felt sorry for were the Trade Federation people (not exactly sure why, maybe because they weren't Jedi) and that cute creature Kenobi was riding around on Utupau. Anakin being burned by lava was kind of cool.
Overall, it gets a 2/10. It gets a 2 because it is not AOTC and the last scene with Owen and Beru looking off into the sunset did not have any special effects (if there were any, they weren't as blatantly obvious as they are in the rest of the film). Bad way to end the saga, Lucas. You can join Stephen Sommers in the Club for Directors Who Destroy Worthy Potential.