Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

Attack of the Clones celebrates a certain youthful spirit in both moviemaking and movie watching; because it's as much phenomenon as movie, audiences will either ride with or reject it. I was happy to take the ride.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Don't go if "Star Wars" isn't your bag: You'll only resist and resent it. But if you're a fan, it's hard to see how you'd be disappointed. Me? I can't wait for May 2005. "Episode III": Hot diggity!

Variety Todd McCarthy

George Lucas has reached deep into the trove of his self-generated mythological world to produce a grand entertainment that offers a satisfying balance among the series' epic, narrative, technological and emotional qualities.

Time Richard Corliss

An exhilarating two hours of serious fun.

USA Today Mike Clark

As for the breathless 45-minute climax, no screen fantasy adventure in memory can match the showmanship.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

The saga regains its grandeur with a complicated but easy-to-follow story. The characters are as satisfying as the effects.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

In a time when, more often than not, sequels disappoint, it's refreshing to uncover something this high-profile that fulfils the promise of its name and adds another title to a storied legacy.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

As the sequence builds, it accretes so many heroic and nightmarish associations it plays like a prelude to apocalypse, which of course will come in Episode III. Attack of the Clones is part soda pop, part witches' brew - and all visual ambrosia.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

A technological landmark that couldn't look or sound better.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Mostly very good. It's exactly the big fix of Saturday-matinee adventure, blazing special effects, inside humor and sly self-references for which its fans have been lusting.

Film Threat Chris Gore

Clones is not a good movie -- but it is an incredibly awesome Star Wars movie! This is far from a perfect film, but the problems are almost dismissable based on the final result.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

Still, in its own Saturday-morning-serial kind of way, Attack of the Clones is a commendable example of the sort of movie we once loved and then outgrew. Of course, if it was even better, we wouldn't feel as if we'd outgrown it.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

A triumph of technology over humanity, and if it falls short of a completely fulfilling experience, it also achieves the kind of primal emotion movies were invented for: wonder.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

The dark fantasist in Lucas makes a comeback after years of once-over-lightly.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Clones makes the Frodo-speak of "Lord of the Rings" sound like Noel Coward.

Boston Globe Renee Graham

One roots for Lucas to get the next film sorted out, and to resurrect the humanity and soul that first made so many fall in love a long time ago with that galaxy far, far away.

The New Yorker David Denby

Lucas shifts back and forth between this kind of original invention and a dependence on pompous dead-level dreck, a grade-B cheapness that he's obviously addicted to. [20 May 2002, p. 114]

Film Threat Ron Wells

You know, each and every person reading this right now will shell out their six bucks ($9-$14 in L.A./New York) to see this film no matter what I say. Hell, I feel ambivalent about it and I'm still going to pay to see it again.

New Times (L.A.) Luke Y. Thompson

Sometimes it bounces along, other times it feels forced. Kids and hardcore fans will love it regardless, and those who don't will nonetheless be talking about it for the next three years.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Here we are again: not entertained, not nearly enough, by an installment of the ''Star Wars'' epic that, for the first time, exhibits symptoms of...nerves. And a chill, conservative grimness of purpose, rather than an excited thrill at the possibilities of cinematic storytelling.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

It is not what's there on the screen that disappoints me, but what's not there.

Newsweek David Ansen

A decidedly mixed bag.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

And while it was always clear that Lucas cared more about special effects than acting, here his lack of interest has produced phenomenally wooden performances from newcomers and veterans alike: Only the imperious Christopher Lee, as baleful Count Dooku, emerges unscathed.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

The movie has a broader range of emotions and visual effects than any "Star Wars" installment since "The Empire Strikes Back," but the writing and acting are as stiff as R2-D2's metal torso.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Lucas knows his fans are un-boreable, un-annoyable and inexhaustible. For an artist, that's more a curse than a blessing.

LA Weekly Hazel-Dawn Dumpert

Attack of the Clones' high-definition surfaces are certainly impressive, but they offer no lifelight, nothing to put your arms around.

Slate David Edelstein

The scale of the enterprise is thrilling; it's too bad the movie is so muddled on so many different levels.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

The overall effect of Lucas' digital mania has been detrimental to the saga. Where the first trilogy was mythological fantasy, the second is pure cartoon. The sad truth is, the more three-dimensional they look, the more two-dimensional they are.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Only a teenage boy could find this kind of stuff continually diverting, and only a teenage boy would not notice flimsy emotions and underdeveloped acting. It seems George Lucas, like Peter Pan, has never really grown up.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Without the mythical power or giddy adventurousness of the first two Star Wars movies, the impact is strangely numbing, like watching a two-and-a-half-hour ILM show reel in search of moneyed investors.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

It is not really much of a movie at all, if by movie you mean a work of visual storytelling about the dramatic actions of a group of interesting characters.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Though the look aspires as usual to be both otherworldly and familiar, there's nothing that doesn't reek of southern California (as opposed to Hollywood) plastic, and this is as true of the characters as the decor.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Attack of the Clones' final 35 minutes very nearly makes up for the preceding 105, featuring as it does the jaw-dropping spectacle of the entire Jedi Council battling it out with not only clones, but also lumbering monsters, space ships of all sorts, and each other.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

There's nothing to stir us, no scene to savor for life -- such as the father-son battle between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader in "The Empire Strikes Back." Back then, we were watching a classic, still the best film in the series. This time, we're watching just another "Star Wars" flick.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Watching Attack of the Clones is like getting rapped on the head with a rubber mallet -- no lasting damage (I pray and hope), but bad enough to bring on an acute bout of dizziness and disorientation. Definitely do not operate heavy machinery after viewing -- this behemoth is brutal.

Village Voice Michael Atkinson

There is an odd cognitive dissonance at work between the obvious ingenuity dedicated to the film's visual details -- alien anatomies, industrial machinery, technological minutiae -- and the retarded intelligence quotient evident in its content.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

For all its video-game bedazzlements, Attack of the Clones suffers from severe digital glut, periodically relieved, if you can call it that, by amateur theatrics.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

I can't remember ever feeling so glad that a movie was finally over. Lucas may have held my imagination hostage for two hours, but reclaiming it afterward wasn't hard at all.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

It's too long, it's too dull, it's too lame.