446. Star Wars: Episode II – Attack Of The Clones (2002)

Starring: Hayden Christensen, Natalie Portman, Ewan McGregor

Director: George Lucas

Running Time: 142 mins

Star Wars: Episode II – Attack Of The Clones is an American film and the fifth in the Star Wars saga. As Anakin falls into a forbidden romance with Padmé, Obi-Wan Kenobi discovers a secret army of clones that may lead to a universal war between the Sith and the Jedi.

We know the many mistakes of The Phantom Menace, but the second prequel film, Attack Of The Clones, takes things to a whole new level. Featuring a painfully forced romance story that completely misses the mark, a horrific script with awful dialogue and terrible pacing, there’s very little here that reminds you of how good Star Wars can be, and for that reason, it’s desperately disappointing.

There are some positives to be seen, though. Like I said, this isn’t a good film, but it’s important to recognise that the visual effects are still very good, although a little bit excessive at times, the score is just as good as any of the Star Wars films thanks to more brilliant work from John Williams, and, despite it not being done in the most interesting way, this film does move the trilogy’s story arc along a lot more than The Phantom Menace, which makes it at least feel more important than you’d think.

But in general, you can only be disappointed by Attack Of The Clones. The biggest issue, by a country mile, is the excessive focus on the romance that blossoms between Anakin and Padmé. Although it does contribute to Anakin’s character development, it takes up over an hour and a half of the running time of this movie.

If this were a Pride and Prejudice-like romantic drama, then that would be fine, but it’s not. It’s Star Wars, so by putting so much focus onto this love story (that is actually pretty poorly developed anyway, with sub-par dialogue and bad on-screen chemistry between Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman), we’re being deprived of an exciting, fast-paced sci-fi adventure (even the trade negotiations in The Phantom Menace were better than this).

That’s not to say there’s no action in this film, because there is. There really is. The problem, however, is that there is almost barely a flicker of action for the first hour and forty-five minutes, which is painfully dull to sit through, and then when we do arrive at a burst of action, it keeps going incessantly for the next forty minutes, so you become just as fed up with the overload of explosions and destruction as you were with the lack of it earlier on.

So it’s fair to say that Attack Of The Clones is an incredibly poorly-paced film, and coupled with low-quality dialogue, too much focus on a story that we just never care about, and a slight overload of CGI, it all makes for a very disappointing film, and that’s why it gets a 6.2 from me.