Star Wars : Attack of the Clones:

I have seen AOTC twice now and my rating for it has dropped a bit with the second viewing it now rates a 6/10. I have broken down my feelings about this film into positives and negatives.

Synopsis: We all know the plot by now. Anakin has grown up and is a Jedi trainee and we see the beginning of his descent into the darkside. Chancellor Palpaltine also continues his quest to become Emperor

Positives :

1. Action scenes, These are what redeemed this film for me, The action scenes were all topnotch and great viewing, The lightsaber battles were great and I liked the fact that the "good guys" got their asses handed to them by Count Dooku. The entrance by Yoda was well executed and the his fight scene with the Count was good but at times bordered on ridiculous. The another great scene was the battle between about a 100 Jedi and a whole droid army, and the jedi having to be rescued by Stormtroopers, How ironic!

2. Jango Fett, I am just a huge mark for the Fetts, I thought they were the best team in the film and just loved all his fights with the Jedi's, I was a bit pissed by his death at the hands of Mace Windu(Samuel L Jackson) but after rewatching it I realised that he had just killed one Jedi, got trampled by a beast, killed the beast and then got attacked by Mace, so I am chalking his defeat to the fact that he faced Mace in a weakened state. The father- son dynamic was topnotch and I just loved it. Oh, not to forget his fight with Obi Wan was a classic.

3. Ja JA Binks, There is very little of him in this film and that is a good thing.

Negatives :

1. The love scenes, while watching the love scenes I actually groaned out loud, boy were they contrived, the dialogue was totally unconvincing, Anakins and Padme delivery of the lines made me cringe. There was absolutely no chemistry between the main leads and Hayden's acting was abysmal! Talking about acting,

2. The acting, I am convinced that the bad acting by most of the leads (not all) is a fault of George Lucas' directing because in his last two Star Wars movies there has not been any really decent acting despite the presence of many actors who have shown great acting chops in the past. In these films you have people like Liam Neeson, Ewan Mcgregor, Samuel L Jackson, and many others who are just phoning their performances in. The only people I can exempt from this charge are Christopher Lee (who plays Count Dooku/Darth Tyrannus) and Ian McDiarmid (who plays Senator Palpaltine/Darth Sidious). It seems that the baddies are the only ones that gave any decent acting performances, who knows maybe George knows only how to direct evil! His problems with directing the so called goodies might be due to him equating being good with being boring!

3. CGI, there is an excessive use of CGI in this movie which is not a bad thing by itself but some of it was not convincing at all. It seems that George thinks that he such a god with CGI that we the audience will not notice the difference between CGI characters and real characters. There is a totally unnecessary use of a CGI character in one scene where Obi Wan Kenobi goes looking for info about a Bounty Hunter, he meets with this diner owner who is a cross between a rooster and a guest on the Jerry Springer show, this was a totally gratuitous use of CGI and not even a convincing one at that. Other examples of bad CGI that was unconvincing where the two scenes where Anakin was riding a CGI beast, these scenes reminded me of when I watched those chessy Sinbad movies as a kid.

4. Factory Scene, This was not needed and seemed to be a scene from a video game! When watching I just wanted this part to end ASAP.

Overall this film was a collection of set action pieces held together by a good main political plot and a terrible romantic subplot with sub par acting. Basically it is about the beginnings of Palpaltine's taking over the republic through engineering unrest and then quashing it. It is also about the beginning of the descent of Anakin into the darkside and how Luke and Leia came to be. The next movie should show the end of these beginnings and will probably be the darkest of the new trilogy.

Niggle, Did anyone think that the clones looked more like Senator Amidala's bodyguard and not Jango??

See ya later,

Shazam!