He's always been a lousy writer and bad director of actors. I don't see why people are surprised that he still is.
"When the best performance in a movie is turned in by a CGI (Yoda), you know the film is in deep trouble."
You mean like Gollum too, right?
It ws no more marginal of a plot than any of the first three movies.
In some ways, maybe better. It's STAR WARS, not Felini or David Lean.
As for Portman, she has turned in decent performances in CLOSER and GARDEN STATE. It's more likely the script and the directing. And the fact that she apparently was feuding with Lucas.
Whoever told Hayden Christensen he could act needs to be publicly pilloried.
Likewise, Christiansen has turnedf in creditable performance in other flicks, like LIFE AS A HOUSE. He was better here than in CLONES, I thought, if still a little wooden at times.
When the best performance in a movie is turned in by a CGI (Yoda), you know the film is in deep trouble.
Actually I thought Ian McDiarmid - as Chancellor/Emperor Palpatine - stole the movie. Once he was disformed he was too over-the-top - but before that's, he's superb. Clearly the best actor of the series.
In sum, REVENGE OF THE SITH is, at its best, as good as anything in EMPIRE or A NEW HOPE. People forget that many of the things they decry in the new movies were present in the original trilogy in some degree - trite dialogue, choppy scene cutaways, flat acting. Fortunately it also had brilliant characterizations in Ford/Solo and Fisher/Leia to overcome those weaknesses.
Go see Shattered Glass. Christensen is very good in that movie about a New Republic staffer who makes stuff up a la Jayson Blaire (sp?). A true story, of course (otherwise they'd have a fake magazine and not use a real magazine).