In space, no one can hear you groan

The soul-deadening string of clichés that is "Attack of the Clones" must immediately be shot beyond Pluto where it can do no harm.

By Stephanie Zacharek

May 16, 2002 | "Star Wars: Episode II -- Attack of the Clones" could be the worst movie ever made and still it would have the faithful rallying around the Lucas franchise, brandishing their light sabers like bayonets. Against that army of formidable opponents, it seems like a waste of breath to point out the flaws in a movie that isn't really a movie at all: truncated sequences that don't string together into a coherent story, dialogue that may as well have been cobbled together out of pieces of wood instead of words, love scenes shot to look like douche commercials. At this point, George Lucas can put whatever he wants on-screen and get away with it. He has become the ruler of the universe, at least the one between his ears; his wish is our command.

Anyone who dares criticize Lucas has to be prepared for an onslaught of e-mail from fans. But the irony here is that for all the fan-boy loyalty he inspires, Lucas doesn't make movies with the hopes or desires of an audience -- any audience -- in mind. In his fortress, the lights are on, but nobody's home.

Forget for a minute that we're the ones paying the electricity bill. "Attack of the Clones" is barely reviewable as a movie because it's something so far beyond (and yet less than) anything an honest-to-God movie should be. It's an event, a juggernaut, with a preprogrammed audience ready to like it whether it's any good or not.

Of course, you could have said the same about "Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace," and you'd be right. But as aggressively piddling and impossible-to-follow as that film was, "Attack of the Clones" is actually worse. Instead of unraveling the back story behind the first "Star Wars" (now, of course, designated as Episode IV) in any recognizable narrative fashion, Lucas has decided to tell it with almost exclusively expository dialogue and a handful of not particularly impressive effects thrown in.

In fact, Lucas seems to have gone out of his way to make the plot complicated, as if following the wormy convolutions of the tale were supposed to be some kind of test -- forget actually caring for the characters or being enthralled by the magic of a story as it unfolds. The message seems to be, if you find yourself unable to diagram the plot and all its alleged intricacies in 60 seconds or less, you can't belong to the club.

Which may be why so many people, consciously or otherwise, are desperate to belong. In the case of "Attack of the Clones," what does your Captain George Decoder Ring get you? You get the crawl at the beginning to explain where we're at in the story, which you'll need whether you remember a shred of the plot of "The Phantom Menace" or not.

Ten years have passed: Padmé Amidala (Natalie Portman) is no longer the queen of the planet Naboo, but an important senator who represents her home planet in the Galactic Republic. Even though we don't really see her do anything except flit about in the worst movie gowns since "Mahogany," she apparently is important enough for someone to want to assassinate her.

An attempt on Padmé's life fails, and Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor, again doing a fine Alec Guinness impersonation but otherwise seeming lost and alone in the galaxy as the one actor attempting to give a real performance in this mess) and his young protégé Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) are assigned to investigate.

The trail leads them to Count Dooku (Christopher Lee), and you know he's bad because his name sounds kind of like kidspeak for "turd." Dooku is a separatist who wants to secede from the Republic and otherwise stir up all sorts of trouble. Luckily, though, on a distant planet everybody has forgotten about, there's an army of mighty soldier clones who are almost ready to receive their orders to defend the Republic. They've been grown from the earwax scrapings of a fearless bounty hunter named Jango Fett, who's the last of the Mandalorians and also the forefather of a great Gypsy guitarist.

In other words, this is a story you'll definitely want to take seriously. It really heats up when young Anakin and Amadala, who knew each other as kids but haven't laid eyes on each other since the puberty fairy waved his magic rod, fall desperately in love. But of course, a Jedi knight isn't allowed to have relationships with the fair sex, and a senator has no time for nookie, anyway.

Thus we're subjected to an embarrassingly dewy scene, set on a soft-focus hillside straight out of "The Sound of Music," in which the two roll around playfully together on the grass, each hoping to inadvertently cop a feel. Later, they stare into each other's eyes on a moonlit terrace, talking in hushed tones about the infeasibility of inserting Tab A into Slot B. Forget "Spaceballs" -- we're talking "Blue Balls."

Next Page: Finally something for the fans: That light-saber duel between pint-size Yoda and the elegant Christopher Lee

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