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STAR WARS: EPISODE II--ATTACK OF THE CLONES Send This Review to a Friend
It takes slogging through the story maze and some laughable, heavy-going romantic dialogue before the real punch of the newly released chapter in the "Star Wars" franchise is delivered. The heroes have been captured and placed in a Roman-style arena with the computerized masses waiting to see them killed by a bizarre entourage of weird dinosaur-like beasts ready to claw and devour them. The special effects are spectacular here, and that's the best of what the film offers, at least until Yoda goes into action in a showdown against Christopher Lee as the evil Count Dooku. Add the manufacture of a clone army and you have the further visual reasons for devotees to see this latest round in the eternal fight of good against evil.
That's about it. For true "Star Wars" followers perhaps that's all that's necessary. But for those who demand more than just another excursion, some of the saga can be either only passable or downright awful when it comes to fleshing out the plot. Ewan McGregor is serviceable as Obi-Wan Kenobi and Samuel L Jackson provides strength as Mace Windu but the romance between Natalie Portman as Padme Amidala, now a Senator targeted for assassination, and Hayden Christensen as the maturing Anakin Skywalker is merely wan. The action is set ten years after what occurred in "The Phantom Menace" as a separatist movement is afoot and an epic galactic battle looms. Anakin and Obi-Wan have the task of guarding Padme.
Portman, better elsewhere, and Christensen are pathetically flat and boring. The lines they must utter from the screenplay by director George Lucas and Jonathan Hales are bad enough to elicit laughter in the wrong places. Such scenes slow the film and render the apparent aim to inspire a young audience by the relationship a misstep. What "Star Wars" has always been about, apart from the effort to project its cosmic good versus evil dynamic, is special effects.
The effects are indeed sensational when the film gets down to the business at hand. The entire staff of those responsible for the concepts and execution of the invented menacing creatures deserves applause and there is still fun in watching the exploding mayhem. Is it worth siting through the drivel in order to see the ultimately astonishing visuals? Only "Star Wars" devotees can answer that question. A 20th Century Fox release.
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