quite entertaining, although lacks the personality of the originals

Rating: 8/10 (6 May 2005)

After the previous two turkeys I wasn't expecting much out of this one, but I was pleasantly surprised. This is a genuinely exciting action movie with some very cool sequences. It looks very good and has a great sense of massiveness in the sets.
It is also a lot of fun to see how nicely the ending of this movie dovetails with the original Star Wars. It makes me want to re-watch that one just to see how it ties in. They really make a nice transition. I did not, unfortunately, get any of the in-jokes relating to what would happen in the future movies because I haven't watched them all a dozen times like some people in the theater had, but it's nice they are there.
This is an odd series, because if you actually watch it in numerical order then a lot of the big surprises in episodes 4-6 wouldn't be surprises at all. Even though events fit well together, the films are best viewed as they were made. Of course, if you started watching from Episode 1 you would just stop and never watch the others, but I would say the correct order to watch the films is Episode 4, 5, 6 and 3. Ignore the other two altogether.
While this is a very enjoyable movie, it does fall flat in terms of character. Obiwan and Anakin are both personality-deprived, and Natalie Portman seems to have been drained of character since the first movie, in which I recall she was at least kind of interesting. What the movie really lacks is the star power of actors like Harrison Ford, Alec Guinness, and Billy Dee Williams. This is a movie about a bunch of stiffs, and CGI actors Yoda and Grievous are more intriguing than the humans (and neither of them is half as interesting as Harrison Ford).
I could quibble with other stuff, but all in all it's quite entertaining, very good looking and, if not as good as the original trilogy, at least - unlike the previous two - worthy of being mentioned in the same breath with them.