The easiest to tolerate?

Rating: 7/10 (22 June 2008)

"I can't watch anymore". I understand you, but that really refers more to the entire Prequel Trilogy. When you put a line like that in... I mean, just look at the title of Intolerable Cruelty, and the tag of The Matrix Revolutions. But yes, my summary refers to the most recent three. And it does, indeed, not take into account how frenetic this can be. There's a healthy dose of action, and some of it does work... but much is overdone. The light-saber stuff varies, but some bits, with how casual its participants are, while the intent surely was to make it look cool, it just takes away the sense of danger, and the thrill and excitement go with it. At times, the fights are done in medium shots, which doesn't help any. The battle scenes, for really the only time in any of these movies, lack any kind of sense of progression, you can never tell who's winning, and it renders them little more than visual spectacles. The effects are amazing, I do give them that. Do the cameos add, or merely detract? The dialog(though it does have moments) and acting(come on, Hayden, you're better elsewhere... so's essentially everyone else) still need work. More holes in the overall canon exist from what is seen and heard in this. This does try to, and to some extent, succeeds in, bridging the gap. The efforts do range between abruptly sudden and too slow, but the middle is reached at least for portions. It's dark in tone, and this is fairly well-achieved. My conclusion after having viewed the entire PT in succession is that Lucas started where it would have been fine to end... Phantom Menace feels classic, and to me, it scores the highest marks as far as being entertaining goes. After that, it just went further and further, and the emotion and how memorable they were declined at the same rate. I imagine few will argue that George has too many yes-men around him, or for that matter that he clearly did not have the entire series in his mind whilst working on any one of the individual films. I would like to point out that I am neither a disgruntled fan nor someone who grew up with the OT and/or experienced a lot of hype for these. The DVD has over a dozen featurettes(of varying length), trailers, TV-spots, cut out material and a commentary track. I recommend this to those who wish to take in all of the canon cinema releases. 7/10