Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones

Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation | Release Date: May 16, 2002

CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION

54	METASCORE Mixed or average reviews based on 39 Critic Reviews

Positive:

Mixed:

Negative:

Watch Now

Buy On

Critic Reviews

Critic score Publication By date

100

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. Read full review

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! Read full review

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. Read full review

Richard Corliss

An exhilarating two hours of serious fun.

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. Read full review

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. Read full review

Mike Clark

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

Lawrence Toppman

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

Lou Lumenick

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

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. Read full review

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. Read full review

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. Read full review

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. Read full review

Peter Travers

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

Steven Rea

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

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. Read full review

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]

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. Read full review

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.

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. Read full review

Hazel-Dawn Dumpert

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

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. Read full review

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. Read full review

Mick LaSalle

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

Roger Ebert

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

David Ansen

A decidedly mixed bag.

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.

David Edelstein

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

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. Read full review

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. Read full review

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. Read full review

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. Read full review

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. Read full review

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. Read full review

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. Read full review

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. Read full review

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.

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. Read full review

Stephen Hunter

It's too long, it's too dull, it's too lame. Read full review