STAR WARS, REVENGE OF THE SITH

Director: George Lucas (A little bit of film work)
Starring: Ewen McGregor, Hayden Christianson, Natalie Portman, Ian McDiarmid

This was an entertaining and enjoyable spectacle. Despite that, I'm going to say that this film suffers from completely unbelievable characters, bad dialogue, and a mishmash of locales, none of which get fleshed out. How can I still be positive on this film? Well, there are a thousand other ingredients in the recipe for a good movie, and the Star Wars franchise has always succeeded on only a few of them. Star Wars works because of its imagination, and excitement, and thrilling operatic productions. It has never cared about subtle characters, situations, or story. This movie is no exception. It succeeds on the former, but fails on the latter. Even after all of these years a light saber duel remains one of the visual splendors of the movies. It was a genius creation in the 1970s, and that won't change. Particular to this film, the positives are Ewen Macgregor (as Obi Wan Kenobi), some exciting light saber battles, and the always good production design. I'll admit that the latter films don't hold a candle to the absolutely exceptional design of the original movies, but they're still head and shoulders above most other contemporary films. The specific negatives are that the transformation of the Anakin Skywalker character into Darth Vader was unbelievable, some of the dialogue was quite bad, and the film jumped around from spot to spot without any real reason to do so - the script could have been much tighter. All in all, a fun, enjoyable movie that will always be regarded as a lesser child of the wonderful originals.

Standouts: Visuals, production and art design, Ewen Macgregor.
Blowouts: Broadly speaking: the script. Precisely speaking: the dialog.

Grade: B