Posted on 05/16/2002 1:54:43 AM PDT by remaininlight
An Old Dog No Longer Barks
by Rex Reed
Hold on to your No-Doz: Another Star Wars is here. Episode II-Attack of the
Clones is as exciting as a rancid Yoo-Hoo. These horrors don't go away; they
just keep coming back, like penicillin-resistant viruses. This $120 million
installment (cheap by series standards) looks and sounds like the four that
came before, except that it's noisier and stupider than the last-and twice
as boring.
From his secluded Skywalker Ranch in the California redwoods, George Lucas
has built a billion-dollar empire putting comic books on film. Grown-ups
with the arrested development of 12-year-olds have been sleeping in the
street waiting to get into Episode II-Attack of the Clones. When they do,
they laugh all the way through it. They know, despite the hype and secrecy
and marketing hysteria, what the rest of us have known for years: None of
the money, power and fame that have made Mr. Lucas a legend in his own mind
and an éminence grise in Hollywood can turn him into a good director. He
knows everything about technology and not a damned thing about how to tell a
story coherently. After fanatic fans and jaded critics alike declared
Episode I-The Phantom Menace a bomb, it piled up $431 million anyway. So
welcome to the fifth of the six installments in this Saturday-afternoon
kiddie jamboree of silly sequels and prequels with Flash Gordon space guns,
a matinee serial told backwards. As Jar Jar Binks, the insulting black
stereotype and most obnoxious character in the Star Wars galaxy, might say,
"The Force done be left me years ago." But that won't stop this feeble blaze
of clanking puppets and flying Frisbees from lining Mr. Lucas' pockets with
enough revenue to rebuild the World Trade Center.
Since I snoozed through whole chunks of this drivel, the best analysis of
the soporific "plot" I can come up with is this: 10 years after The Phantom
Menace, there's still a lot of gibberish about trade federations, warring
androids, rechargeable laser swords and the mysteries surrounding the Sith.
Much unrest in the galaxy. The former Jedi and evil renegade, Count Dooku
(Christopher Lee, from the cheesy old British Dracula movies, who wreaks
havoc from a flying motor scooter), has led the separatists away from the
Republic, and there aren't enough Jedi left to protect it. So a secret army
of clones has been assembled like General Motors parts on the planet Kamino.
Backed by the Trade Federation, Commerce Guild, Intergalactic Banking Clan,
Techno Union and Corporate Alliance, Dooku has crossed over to the Dark Side
with the aid of a villainous bounty hunter, Jango Fett. Are you still with
me?
Meanwhile, the former Queen of Naboo has grown up to become the blank-faced,
cleavage-baring Senator Padmé Amidala (Natalie Portman), and the whiny
little Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) has turned into a pouty,
arrogant, rebellious Jedi trainee under the patient tutelage of our old
friend Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor). Assigned to guard Amidala after an
assassination attempt, Obi-Wan's apprentice falls in love and disobeys
orders at the same time, chasing off to Tatooine, Naboo and Coruscant for
fun and frolic. It's so easy to see why he'll eventually turn into Darth
Vader that when Obi-Wan says, "Why does something tell me you'll end up
being the death of me?" the audience roars with laughter. The exposition
scenes would lull even children who aren't suffering from attention-deficit
disorders to sleep. The dialogue is sub-mental, but Toronto commercial pinup
Hayden Christensen, as the reckless, lovesick and corruptible Anakin, and
Ms. Portman, as the monotonous, gooey-faced Amidala, are so relentlessly
wooden they make the moronic script by Mr. Lucas and Jonathan (The Scorpion
King) Hales sound even worse than it looked on paper. Without a coherent
narrative or riveting dialogue for caulking to hold the silly digital
effects together, the movie just hangs out, like the moppets at the popcorn
machine. In the first Star Wars trilogy, there was always an amusing toy or
unexpected scene to talk about later. I couldn't remember anything in
Episode II-Attack of the Clones 10 minutes after I lumbered through the exit
door.
Clearly, the Lucas fantasy is an old dog that no longer barks. Now they're
just beating it to death. With nothing but blue screens in the background,
the actors play to a blank wall, then get upstaged by the high-definition
computer-generated action figures superimposed later, in postproduction.
Even a pro like Samuel L. Jackson, reappearing as Jedi counselor Mace Windu,
looks bewildered, then catatonic. Sensing disaster from recycled droid wars
and a love story out of Her Highness and the Bellboy, Mr. Lucas drags in new
characters I can't spell, pronounce or identify, as well as old familiars
like the clanking C-3PO; the chirpy little automaton R2-D2; the scrap-metal
Stepinfetchit, Jar Jar Binks, with his incomprehensible Jamaican patois; and
even old Yoda, the 800-year-old wizard who dispenses dopey wisdom on a
whoopee cushion and looks like an animated subway rat on a high-carb diet.
This time Yoda joins the fray, tossing away his cane and grabbing his
rechargeable light saber to fight off 79-year-old Christopher Lee, who is
actually swinging knives at empty spaces. Is it any wonder the movie looks
like it takes place in an asylum? The fun has even gone out of Yoda. Still
the voice of Frank Oz but no longer a hairy, wiggly-eared puppet, Yoda has
been reduced to a digitally processed, squinty-eyed Mickey Mouse with
glaucoma. Dreadful acting, a funereal pace and a lot of old toys wheeled in
just to remind you what it was you liked about Star Wars 25 years ago don't
say much for the future of a worn-out idea that has woefully run out of jet
fuel. The young lovers land on a conveyor belt dodging giant staple guns,
the three stars are sent to a Roman-style forum to be executed by whatever
unused monster was left over from Jurassic Park, and it's a fight to the
death with those damned neon hockey sticks. Haven't we been there before?
Even the title is a fake: There is no attack of the clones. At the end,
thousands of them march into spaceships to launch a clone war, but they're
only paving the way for (oy vey!) next year's Star Wars: Episode III. The
prospect fills me with as much anticipation as a margarine shortage.
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&th=7b3c4eaa44a4926d&rnum=1
I enjoyed the first four movies (Phantom Menace could've used a little work, but it was still fun to watch), and when I see this movie this afternoon I figure I'll enjoy it, too.
I missed all the attendent hype and promotion.
When I finally got to see it a couple, few years later, I could not understand why people were so ga ga over it.
I've never been really impressed with this Star Wars thing. The first was the best by far but that is a relative compliment.
Me neither. I've seen the films, but I am not impressed.
Cmon that was funny...
Pithy, my friend. Pithy.
When I finally saw Phantom Menace, it became clear the source of all the weird "my bad" lingo that had infected the FR server the last year and a half or so. Apparently, many Freepers find Jar Jar Binks to be a fine linguistics consultant.
Of course, I ascribed the same pithiness to Sir John Gielgud's line in Arthur, "I'll alert the media."
Michael
That review was written by Rex Reed. I must question his tastes and judgment in general, and I base this on the obvious fact that he prefers to have sex with men. If he botches up such a momentous exercise of judgment as preferring the flat chest, hershey highway and hard pole to the supple grace of the female form, then why would I ever trust him to judge something as simple as entertainment.
"The prospect fills me with as much anticipation as a margarine shortage."
Obviously, a margarine shortage would fill him with dread because of the necessary application of margarine in his bedroom activities. Freak.
Yep, if Rex Reed wants to be bitter, a Star Wars fan can respond in kind.
I have heard that Yoda moonlights as Hans Moleman on The Simpsons between Star War gigs. :o) fsf
Things I liked - decent pacing to the movie, I never got too bored. Several key points to the overall story get addressed, which was cool - since Episode 3 is the only remaining movie it becomes more clear how we get from Episode 2 to 4. It's just plain fun getting back into the Star Wars story after not thinking about it for awhile.
Things I did not like - I'd thought Jar-Jar would only be in it briefly; he was in it for ~8-10 minutes, which was 8-10 minutes too long for me... The writing still was not as good as Star Wars or Empire Strikes Back, or perhaps I'm older and more critical, perhaps both. I'm being a bit picky here - I did not like the cgi Yoda. He was so engrained in my mind as a puppet/however they did it before, and now they try to do a lot more facial expressions and physical movements that he's never done. Just did not feel like the same guy to me, and that was a bit disturbing.
Don't rush out to see this one, but do see it in a theatre sometime. My .02.
Regards.
It's space fantasy, not hard sci-fi. And who are these "series science fiction writers" that you like so much?
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