Worth watching the first two for, and that's saying something!

Rating: 9/10 (24 May 2005)

Revenge of the Sith is a true Star Wars movie. It's as if Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones were made to set the stage for the events in this movie.
Revenge of the Sith is much faster paced than the first two movies. There is more action, and no drop in quality in the action sequences. The special effects are as good as you would expect from Lucas, the one area where even his most vociferous critics agree that he excelled even at the worst points.
The biggest weaknesses of the first two movies: unconvincing love scenes, wooden acting, stupid dialog, illogical choices from characters-- all still exist in Sith, but in much lower concentration. They don't have a Jar-Jar problem. Anakin is much more believable as a Jedi than in Clones and the relationship between him and Kenobi is also much more believable.
Still, the biggest problem with the movies is with the believability of characters. Here's what I disliked the most (Spoilers ahead): #1- Anakin's choice to join the dark side is extremely contrived. He switches allegiance from Jedi to Sith in a way that is totally out of place with his character. He believes a fantastic claim by someone whom by all rights he should distrust more than anyone. His choice to intervene when he did, while being a fine a shadow of Return of the Jedi. does not make sense. It was too radical. He should have started off learning dark side powers and felt it really was possible to achieve his goal before committing himself to the course of the dark side. Instead he makes the dumbest choice he possibly could have.
#2- The Jedi were far too inept. They were overcome by small numbers and taken by surprise when their very power should have prevented that sort of thing from working against them.
But despite sharing in a small degree the flaws of the first two movies, Revenge of the Sith was a fun and charming film that gets you involved in the plot and makes you care about the characters (particularly Obi Wan) in the same way you did in the original trilogy.