Good pieces, but poorly assembled

Rating: 3/10 (26 May 2005)

I went into this movie really hoping for the movie that would save the entire prequel trilogy. Instead it was the worst of the three. The acting has only gotten worse on all counts, the mood is confused, and the plot disjointed, barreling along ungracefully and without reason.
The actors all felt flat; Portman and Christensen have such a painful lack of chemistry I felt awkward just watching it, more like middle schoolers trying really hard to pretend to like each other than two people who couldn't resist the powerful force of love that swept them together and must deal with the consequences. Others, even formerly solid performers McGregor and McDiarmid, slipped some in this last installment. Although in the case of McDiarmid it seemed more a consequence of Lucas making odd choices as a director and writer than any real failing on McDiarmid's part in playing the role.
Also, despite its PG-13 rating, this movie never felt all that dark to me. It was difficult to appreciate any emotional impact in the movie due again to largely flat performances from everyone involved. There were far too many silly moments in the movie that ruined the 'dark' atmosphere and made me feel like Lucas got scared of going too far and lightened things up with humor that, in the end, just confused the emotional impact of the movie as a whole.
The characters never seemed to have good reasons to do what they were doing other than they needed to do them in order to set up the next movie in the series. Events seemed to happen almost nonsensically and characters were automatons. They gave blank statements of intent without any understandable reason behind their intent except an invisible director's hand pushing the plot in the direction it had to go without providing reason for it to do so.
Overall, the pieces for a good movie are there, the action scenes are pretty cool (although hard to enjoy when the characters are not very convincing about why they are fighting), and there are plenty of juicy subjects, a good man falling to evil, galactic war, betrayal, subterfuge, etc. but what the movie lacked was the direction to bring all the jumbled pieces together into a cohesive whole.