...doesn't quite fit the hype.... didn't really expect it to either....

Rating: 5/10 (23 May 2005)

As an avid Star Wars fan, I am inclined more to the original Trilogy than the prequels, but I decided I would try and set aside any cast I set for it, and attempt to watch this film as it is and to be fair to it, I wasn't as disappointed with it as I thought I would be. At first, I was expecting something as bad as Episode II (which in my opinion was over 2 hours of complete rubbish), but overall, I found that this was by far the best of the prequels, which admittedly isn't really that much of an achievement, but it's a start.
It was strange to see the film's time-line progress so quickly and without indications, and what I mean by this is that Padme starts the film like she ended the second (albeit with a Leia hairdo) and what seems like 10 minutes down the line, she's got this big belly. Where'd the time go?? Then of course, there was the supposed build up of the love between Anakin and Padme, which in all honesty was hardly done well at all in the previous episode. Yet, in the moment with no dialogue, just music and images, you could see the bond, but sadly, only during that moment because once the interaction between Anakin and Padme came about, the bond seemingly disappears.
The tie-ins to the original trilogy were mixed in my opinion. Some were good, but others were feeble For instance, Palpatine swivelling in the chair at the beginning a la Return of the Jedi was nice, amusing for the irony of it all. The first Death Star taking 17 years to build, but the second Death Star only taking 4 just beggared belief.
However, after all this is said and done, the action scenes (and particularly the lightsaber duels) were most enjoyable and were cut into the non-action scenes quite regularly so as to keep you entertained. It's probably quite harsh to constantly blame George Lucas on ruining Star Wars, because to be fair, nothing he did with these prequels would ever match up to the originals. Overall, I think if you watch this film as the end of the prequels, it's not bad, but if you try to watch it as part of the saga, it loses somewhat of the finesse that the originals had, despite the hammy acting. But at least it's better than Episode II.