Friday, May 10, 2002 | 8:52 a.m.
Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones
In time I may regret the 3 1/2-star rating of "Star Wars Episode II Attack of the Clones," which opens Thursday, accompanying this review. The possibility exists. I gave a similar rating to "The Phantom Menace," the first episode (and fourth film) in George Lucas' "Star Wars" saga, only to change my mind upon a second viewing. By that time the review had been printed, and I was forever labeled an apologist for one of the dumbest movies I've ever seen.
The reason for my blunder is something of a national problem: I was starved for an event film. I love independent and foreign film, animation, heist movies, comedies pretty much any celluloid with a brain. But every now and again, I need to see something explode. I need to visit other worlds, goggle at alien cultures, and hear someone shout "Prepare to fire." I need laser cannons, warp speed and starships, and have since I was first introduced to those concepts by Lucas in the summer of 1977.
So I gave "Menace" my high mark, and to this day I defend it, even though I don't agree with it anymore. "The Phantom Menace" was poorly cast, hobbled by hokey dialogue and given to long stretches in which the characters talked politics.
Lucas had believed his own hype, and forgot what it felt like to sit in a movie theater watching an adventure serial -- the giddiness, the nail-biting disbelief. That's what made "Star Wars" a cultural institution: shared enthusiasm.
Lucas doesn't bring back all those feelings with "Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones," but he comes closer than he has with any "Star Wars" film since the fifth episode (and second movie), "The Empire Strikes Back." (Curse Lucas' math.) It moves along with breakneck speed, introduces new worlds and creatures with clockwork regularity, and sheepishly offers the fun which "Episode I" tried to pass off as a given.
Lucas' dialogue still stinks (a polish by Jonathan Hales helps some), but with all the ships flying around and all the lightsabers slicing through the air, who has time to talk?
Set some 10 years after "Phantom," "Clones" chronicles the beginning of a war, from an assassination attempt to an intense first battle. Squashed in between is a budding romance, a detective story and a thousand pieces of mythology, weaving in and out of each other like the electrons of an atom.
There's very little dead air in "Clones," and 2 1/4 hours pass quickly, almost too quickly. You want to linger on the ocean world where Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) discovers a secret clone army, or get inside the head of bounty hunter Jango Fett (Temuera Morrison). Lucas reveals just enough, and no more.
Strangely for Lucas, "Clones" calls for its main character to be largely unlikeable. The twentysomething Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) is well on his way to becoming Darth Vader, yet he has to stand with the Jedi Council, and woo Senator Amidala (Natalie Portman), the lover who will bear his children, Luke and Leia. He is arrogant, willful, even malicious -- yet the other characters have to love him, even if the audience doesn't. It's a sharp bit of storytelling, and Christensen does all right by it.
Ditto McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi. When McGregor took the role originated by Sir Alec Guinness, he chose to emulate the venerable actor's cadences and mannerisms by copying them from Guinness' earlier films, but he barely got a chance to use those tricks in "Phantom."
Here, he all but carries the story, or at least replenishes the spirit that Christensen's character takes out. It's hard not to smile as he engages in father-son banter with Christensen, or ends a chase scene by announcing that he's going to get a drink. You can see the beginnings of the kindly, witty old codger Luke finds in the Tatooine desert for the first time.
There are still a few more holes in the airtight hull, however. "Attack of the Clones" leans entirely too heavily on computer-generated effects; even Yoda (still voiced by Frank Oz) was created on a workstation this time out. The herky-jerky movements of some of Lucas' human figures don't look remotely human -- watch for a scene in which Anakin rides a beast, to impress Amidala -- and some of the backgrounds look similar to video game playfields.
The romance is implausible; Amidala was too smart in "Phantom" to fall for this snot-nosed brat, who runs his mouth like a faucet and half-seriously suggests that a dictatorship isn't such a bad idea.
However, "Episode II's" frenetic pace and eye-popping design overcomes these faults for the most part. It may be too intense for young children, but for a 15-year-old boy, it's perfect. Lucas will give them all the starships and laser cannons they could want, and those among us who still have a 15-year-old inside can smile a sentimental smile. This is the way things were in 1977, even if we're different now.
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