Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones Movie Review

Article by Gabe Zia

Lazy Film Critic - Road to Episode VII

Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones Movie Review

So, incase you missed it yesterday, I'm doing a special segment for this week leading up to the release of Star Wars episode VII. If you missed my review for Phantom Menace, be sure to check that out as well. But for now, I'm going to review Episode II: Attack of the Clones, which is in my opinion the absolute worst Star Wars film not just of the prequels, but the series as a whole.

Now, in my review for The Phantom Menace, I said Ewan Mcgregor was one of the acting highlights of that movie, and that is certainly true here. And once again, he's really the best part of this movie. Christopher Lee does a decent job as the villain - which is to be expected, he's Christopher Lee. However, much like Phantom Menace, the rest of the cast is incredibly bland, and there's very little visible effort shown. What's worse is that, unlike Phantom Menace where the two acting highlights were the leads, now Ewan Mcgregor is taking a back seat to Hayden Christensen, who has become infamous for his performance in this movie.

*Django Unchained theme plays in the distance* 

One of the things that really bugs me about this movie is the action sequences, because much like in Phantom Menace, they're pretty decent. However, to Phantom Menace's credit, that movie did a good job of balancing the action and the mind-numbingly boring political sub-plot. But here, the action seems to be put lower on the list of priorities. There are some entertaining sequences, sure, but they're greatly overshadowed by the films story, which takes itself way too seriously. 

Now, with The Phantom Menace, one of the key issues with that film was the writing and the characters, and Attack of the Clones does exactly nothing to improve the situation. Once again, the dialogue in this movie is absolute garbage, and brings back all the problems the dialogue in Phantom Menace had. It's cheesy, nonsensical, annoying, or just really uninteresting. And while it's not all horrific, there is one scene in the movie that I enjoy in terms of dialogue, but it happens very early one and makes up about a minute (or even less) of the movie. So it's not enough to save the writing.

You remember how in The Phantom Menace the film seems to go to absurd lengths to set up parts of the story in the originals? Attack of the Clones brings that back as well, and it's even more ridiculous. Now, while I'll admit it's interesting to find out what exactly Luke and Obi-Wan were talking about in A New Hope when they mention "the clone wars", but that's where the interest ends. The way this movie tries to tie in Anakins robotic hand, the clones, the stormtroopers, and the death star is extremely unnecessary. Much like Phantom Menace, this film would have been much better off it it wasn't trying so hard to tie itself into the original films.

Final Rating
Where Phantom Menace had a few things I enjoyed, Attack of the Clones has almost nothing to like about it. The few things I do like are very minor, and go mostly unnoticed due to the films focus on all the other stuff that just isn't interesting. The writing sucks, the CGI is mediocre, the characters are boring, most of the actors don't seem to care about their performance, the action seems to get cut off constantly by a boring story, and it's not worth your time. The only reason to watch this movie is if you're marathoning the series in anticipation of The Force Awakens, and even then, try to watch it on TV or something.