Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones Review
by Ronald O. Christian (ronc AT europa DOT com)June 17th, 2002
Star Wars: Attack of the Clones (2002)
Three stars of five
I have to say that Attack of the Clones was better than I expected. Oh, the dialog was sometimes *worse* than The Scorpion King (the previous winner of Worst Dialog of the Year award) -- Every ten minutes or so I would say "that's got to be the worst line" and then get proven wrong a few minutes later -- But despite a plethora of cringe-worthy moments, I'm forced to say that the film as a whole held together fairly well. That is to say, the concept and framework were interesting, even though the implementation often fell short.
It was an interesting test of movie savvy to separate the actors who can't act from the actors who can but probably weren't allowed to. I've seen Natalie Portman and Ewan McGregor and Sam Jackson all deliver excellent work, so their generally lackluster and sometimes painful performances in Attack of the Clones must be due to other factors. The script is definitely one, (see dialog, above) and the direction is probably another.
We saw a film projection at a theater chain in Roseburg, OR. It was a regular size theater, not one of those giant-tv-multiplexes. The theater was about 2/3 full. The local newspaper had articles about a few fans who had lined up weeks ahead of time for the first midnight showing, and then the showing had not sold out. Apparently none of them have. I guess Roseburg just isn't a Star Wars kinda town.
Visually, the film did seem to be washed out, but not consistently. Some parts were sharp and saturated, others were soft and lacking in saturation and contrast. There seemed to be a direct relationship between the quality of the visuals and the number of special effects onscreen. I wonder if this is an artifact of the current digital effect state of the art, as transparency and visible mattes were artifacts of the previous generation of f/x.
One thing I *did* notice was that pans didn't smear nearly as badly as I'm used to seeing. I wonder if this is a benefit of digital capture.
During the battle scenes the sound would occasionally go POP!! and cut out for a quarter second or so. I guess the transients were too much for the local sound system. Note, I'm not talking about the moment of silence as the bounty hunter's mines detonated, which I understand was intentional. Parenthetically, Derek is absolutely right; they do sound exactly like El Kabong, amplified to ear-splitting volume.
I don't agree with complaints that the film dragged in parts. I found the pacing perfectly reasonable, with the quiet parts giving much-needed plot advancement (such as it was) and a breather from the action. Without the quiet parts, there wouldn't have been much difference between watching the film and looking over someone's shoulder while they played a really advanced video game. The problem was not that the romance parts dragged; the problem was that the dialog was so astoundingly bad and the delivery so stilted that it kept drawing you out of the movie. Fortunately, you can always turn your ears off and spend the time just watching Natalie Portman. [1] Natalie has never looked better. I only wish she had been given less off-putting things to say.
If you're not ADD or can go two hours without touching a gamepad, you ought to be able to make it through Attack of the Clones without being bored. Troubled, aghast, annoyed, unintentionally amused, but not bored.
This has been a jarjar-free article. My current theory is that if I ignore him, he'll go away.
[1] But just once this year, I'd really like instead to be able to turn my eyes off and listen to expertly written, well-delivered dialog. Oh well.
Ron
http://roc85.home.attbi.com
"Protesters against the wearing of animal skins by humans unaccountably fail to throw paint over Hell's Angels."
-- Terry Pratchett
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