Reviews

Before I even begin, I'm going to say that I'm not a huge Star Wars fan. I found that all of the reviews of Revenge of the Sith were mixed. They were black and white, either you loved it, or you hated it and wanted George Lucas to die. Personally, I choose the former.

I also first viewed Star Wars (Episode IV, now) when I was a kid. No, there is no question in my mind that the 'originals' were good. But, while reading magazine articles or talking to my friends, I found that people didn't give the newer, prequel trilogy a chance. They said that there was no story, unrecognizable characters, too much special effects, and that they 'ruined the saga.' I do not agree with this general view. I prefer to view the series as a whole, rather than 'original' and 'prequel', 'good' or 'bad', 'black' and 'white.' I was fortunate enough to not watch the 'orginals' again until the special editions rolled around. (By the way, I thought that the changes made the movies better.)So when Episode I came out, I was given a generally biased view. I knew that I wasn't about to see the stories I had gotten to know. I was about to see what some people can't come to grips with: A DIFFERENT STORY. Not entirely different, but a story without Luke, Leia, Han, or Chewbacca. Personally, I enjoyed it very very much. Even more so than Episode VI, damn Ewoks.

I enjoyed Episode II even more for all the same reasons. I liked the story, and yes, I thought the acting was fine. And I never thought that Jar Jar was THAT annoying. For me, it ranked up there with Episode V as my second favorite.

Episode III did not disappoint me at all. In fact, it surpassed my expectations. I thought it was the best one of the entire saga. Even better than Episode IV. The effects were incredible, as was the acting, the story, the locations, and...everything. I could go on for pages describing how much I liked it and why, but its already getting a little long.

So don't take my word for it. Actually see the movies. And don't watch them in order of release, instead, try to forget about the 'original' characters, and watch them in order. It will change your entire perspective of the movies. It did it for me. 10 out of 10

Yes. This movie was bad. BUT, it was not the worst. 'Jaws' movie, that is. But seriously folks, where did they find this script? A million chimpanzee's randomly banging away on typewriters could come up with a better concept. This was a bad, bad movie, and I even heard it lost money. (Ha ha, there is justice). There were two redeeming qualities, though, the first was that it was not Jaws 3(D), and the second was the music, was was better than Jaws 3(D!). And when I write that, I mean that it could be actually good (whoa, the music, I mean) and that the rest of the time, it wasn't so bad that it made me want to tear off my ears.

But enough praise for this piece of cheese. The 'story' was basically this: a giant sock-puppet shark plans to hunt down the remaining members of the family from the original Jaws and kill them in a series of incoherent jump cuts. But the mother, being the astute little one, comes to the conclusion that the shark is seeking revenge for the other four sharks that the Brody's killed through-out the other movies. So she logically goes with the LAST STARFIGHTER to an even smaller island in the Caribean populated by a bunch of 'Jamacians' and Michael Caine.

There is some romantic banter between Caine and the widowed Lorraine Gary (the mom), and we get to see the LAST STARFIGHTER and his good friend (snicker) Mario Van Peebles put tracking devices on conchs.(?)Though out all the remaining running time, only one person gets killed, and, I would like to note, that person was driving a Bannana Boat....

I won't give away the ending, although I will say that Gary (Lorraine) steals a boat to kill the shark, Michael Caine's seaplane gets eaten by the shark (?), Mario Van Peebles get munched and dragged underwater but...doesn't..die, THE LAST STARFIGHTER's huge scientific ability as he try's to fix the weird shark-zapper thing by lightly tapping the outer-case. And, oh yeah, the shark roars repeatedly, jumps 20 feet out of the water, stays there for about 30 seconds, gets impaled on the boat, and blows up.

Whoops.

While enjoying this movie, its fun to try and find bloopers and technical mistakes. For instance, whenever the shark appears, there is always a pool of blood, even if it hadn't attacked anything. Also look for the pole that propels it attached to its side in practically every shot (or the rail attached to the bottom as it stalks the corridors of the sunken ship(?)) There are also fun little tidbits and factual errors such as the fact that sharks don't roar like lions, and even though they can in fact jump out of the water, they tend not to stay there for half a minute. They also try to avoid traveling hundreds of miles in a single day, and usually, they arn't fixated on the death of a single family.

I could go on forever complaining, but I already have. I recommend watching this if you have insomnia or if you have no choice.

When i first saw Episode II in theaters, I wondered what everyone was complaining about. It was very exciting and action packed. There were lots of subtle things going on that people could easily mistake weak plot and bad acting.

First, I'll start with the love story. People often said that Christenen was wooden and was a terrible actor. I found him to be very natural and, he had very realistic and human reactions and dialog. Most audiences were expecting a more heroic, easier to relate to hero than Hayden Christensen played. I thought he was very, very good. Natalie Portman was also very good in her role, and was allowed to be more natural than in The Phantom Menance.

Ewan McGregor, undoubtedly, carried the movie on his shoulders. He is, quite possibly, the best actor in the entire series. On top of that, he was allowed to be much more active in this movie, speeding around the galaxy and what-not.

Temura Morrison was excellent as one of the new villains, Boba Fett's father. While he died anti-climatically, he still was very cool and threatening. It was also very cool to know that the Storm troopers from the end of III, and IV, V, and VI were all based on Jango Fetts clones, who were the original "Clone Troopers", who brought back memories of the sterile-white armored Storm troopers from the original trilogy.

The special-effects in this movie, like those of the Phantom Menace and the DVD releases of the originals, were absolutely mind-blowing. The backgrounds were incredibly detailed and incredibly realistic. The chase scene through Corusant was awesome, as were all the Clone troopers (who were digitally created) and the end battle scenes. Yoda's end fight was also very fun to watch and visually amazing.

I don't understand why people don't like this movie. 'Attack of the Clones' is one of the best, along with 'The Empire Strikes Back', and, my favorite, 'Revenge of the Sith'. While this movie was not perfect, I still give it ****3/4 out of *****

While I realize that it is difficult to meet everyone's expectations, I think that the filmmaker's blew it with what could have been the year's best movie. To start off, I'd like to say that I am a huge fan of the earlier 'Hitchhiker' books. They never seemed to drag and more importantly, you never asked yourself 'What the bloody hell is going on?" Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the movie.

I'll start off with the stuff that I liked. I found that I preferred the 'look' of the movie to the universe I had imagined while reading the book, which doesn't happen very much. I thought that everything, from the spaceships to the characters looked even better than I had imagined.

Also, the puppets from Jim Henson's puppet shop were incredible. I found it worthwhile to sit through the movie just to watch the big, ugly...alien. Even though they were huge green blobs, you could believe that they existed, and were much more realistic that in they had used CGI.

And the CGI was incredible as well. The planet factory place was astounding, along with all the other backdrops though out the movie.

The opening song was also quite funny, but it got my hopes up for the remainder of the screen time. Which brings me to the parts which I didn't like, like for instance, the added in love triangle. In the original book, Trillian played a mostly secondary role to the rest of the story. The filmmakers elevated her part so much that about three quarters of the movie was devoted to the love story. The added in subplot with Zaphod's old campaign enemy, John Malcovitch, was a strain also. While the whole 'Nose-worshipping' bit was amusing, I had absolutely no clue what was going on. The added on happy ending and the changed roles of the mice and Slartibartfast was disappointing and not very funny or inspiring.

I thought that Alan Rickman was a perfect voice for Marvin, and he looked very much like how i thought he would, but all of his very funny lines from the book (and everyone else's, for that matter) became...not funny. And the trailer made it look so good...I was especially disappointed with the flyswatter bit.

My over all recommendation is: Watch the trailer and read the book instead, and if you want to watch the movie, mute all the parts except with the puppetry and read the book.

*** out of *****, and i give it that because i liked the books.