Good but not great

Rating: 3/10 (22 May 2005)

Compared to the other 5 movies in the series, this is clearly the best. The special effects are fantastic and that is certainly the highlight.
However - when you are spending such huge amounts of money on a movie, surely you can afford to spare a little extra to find a decent script writer!!! The dialogue in this movie is AWFUL! I thought we had seen the worst of this in Luke Skywalker's cry of "Nooooooo!!! It's not truuuuuuuueeee!!!" when Darth told him about him being his dear old Dad. Clearly the worst bit acting in movie history. But to my shock and dismay, part of this line is repeated - when Darth Vader finds out Padme is dead, he cries out "Nooooooooooooooo!!!!" while shaking his fists in a not very menacing way. I cannot believe that they aren't so ashamed of the previous 'Noooooooo' that they would actually repeat it.
The atrocious dialogue is not helped by the mediocre acting, particularly by Hayden Christiensen. He is so wooden that it is ridiculous and it is very funny watching his eyebrows get lower throughout the movie. By the last 10 minutes, they are down to his knees. I think we will see him go the way of Mark Hamill - never to be heard of again. But he is not the only one guilty of bad acting.
Now that I have got that off my chest, I am glad I saw the movie and don't feel it was a waste of money. But it could have been memorable if they had just spent some extra cash on a better script writer and a few more acting lessons.