After the critical thrashing of Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace, I figured that George Lucas would hand over his director’s hat to someone else, like he did after the original 1977 Star Wars. But no, armed with even more digital gimmickry Lucas is back in the saddle. Although he has improved on that last debacle, he'd better get ready for another round of thrashing.

This film picks up more or less where the other left off -- although most of the actors haven’t aged at all except for Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen). Anakin is now grown up and his hormones are raging for Senator Padmé Amidala, played by Natalie Portman (who can blame him?). It’s a love story amidst a spectacle of elaborate, digitally drawn special effects and its purpose is really to fill in the blanks for when Episode III comes along. There’s a story, sort of, but no one takes it too seriously and it exists solely to show how elaborately Lucas can throw pixels up on a screen.

The focus of Attack of the Clones is really the special effects. That’s what Lucas the Gearhead is really about -- an overage boy with elaborate toys. And they range from awe-inspiring to merely good. Lucas has made much noise about shooting it all on digital videotape and letting everyone know that he thinks that’s the future. Perhaps it is, but it won’t be for reasons of quality. Admittedly, I saw it on film and certainly some scenes do look impressive, but there’s no way digital projection is going to make it any more real looking. For all the time and money that went into this it just doesn’t look quite right or all that real. The best-looking effects-type film I’ve seen is still The Matrix. It certainly outdid The Phantom Menace at the time and while it may not be as elaborate as this one, it still looks better.

And like The Phantom Menace, the acting ranges from only acceptable to simply horrible. Hayden Christensen may look good as Anakin Skywalker, but his ability to deliver lines wouldn’t make it on a Saturday morning sitcom. When he begins to show his "dark side" his menacing looks become laughable. I was surprised that his acting résumé is as long as it is -- I thought he was a rank beginner. Natalie Portman looks good too, but she can act. Unfortunately, she doesn’t really get to do that here. She’s in a rather thankless role and plays most of her scenes opposite Christensen wearing costumes that make her look more foolish than heroic. The only one who gets it right is Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi. In Episode I he was almost frigid and his delivery of lines was monotone. He was, quite simply, a bore. Here he’s loosened up some and brought a bit of swashbuckling heroism to his role. Oh yes, there’s Yoda, too, and he gets the biggest audience reaction of the bunch. He’s gone from being a Muppet in the previous films to being completely digitally generated here. When he whips out his lightsaber the audience burst into laughter -- not a good sign. Good thing the little green guy isn’t real or his feelings might be hurt.

The three original Star Wars films used a lot of elaborate sets and miniature models for the effects. Certainly it was limited, but it worked on us. Plus, there was a half-decent story. Some described it as a western in outer space. Today, we have computers for darn near everything that’s seen on the screen and they’ve taken the place of creating a really good story. I looked around the audience as the spectacles were being projected. The people were attentive, but never in awe. When people know that everything up there is generated with bits and bytes, it takes a lot of the fun out of it. It’s more or less like seeing an extremely elaborate cartoon, and for that reason alone the sense of wonder and astonishment is gone.

And in the end, that’s really what the Star Wars franchise has become: an elaborate bit of animation whipped onto the screen to sell lots of tickets based on new hype over an old brand name. As for the stories, that does not seem to matter when there’s lot of merchandise to sell on the side. George Lucas’s big-ticket series is high-tech filmmaking, but that hasn’t made it any better. This latest installment gets a **1/2 rating.

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