anotheranon | Episode II, yeah!

So.. Star Wars.

I enjoyed it. Better than "Menace", most certainly, but not the Second Coming of Lucas that I think fans were hoping for.

First off, the bad stuff:

The love story was not realistic, and was poorly written. The dialogue was so camp I flinched. Amidala has no reason to love Anakin, and shows no indication that she does until she proclaims her love (cheezily). Anakin is petulant, volatile, and grossly immature to her sophisticated senator - it was hard to believe that she would humor this sappy teenager. She also shows absolutely no apprehension upon Anakin telling her that he killed the entire Tusken raider tribe that killed his mother - this is so blatantly painted as the start of his decline to the Dark Side that it is too much for the audience to believe that Amidala doesn't see it too.
I think they tried to include too much - multiple new bad guys, the creation of Boba Fett, Anakin's trauma about his mother's death, the abysmal love story, and the clone army.

Ok, now that that's out of the way we can get to:

The action! This is what Lucas is good at and he should have stuck to it. Lightsaber fights, a space age car chase through Coruscant's skies, Obi Wan chasing Jango Fett.
Coruscant. In this movie we get to see more of the local lifestyle, including a very slick club (where most of the women seem to letch on Anakin), a cyber-diner (one of Obi-Wan's old contacts is a short-order cook) and some industrial areas (lifted straight out of "Blade Runner", but in a good way). Actually, a lot of the view of the Coruscant skyline appears to be inspired by Blade Runner, right down to the holographic advertisements seen everywhere. And it works quite well.
More women in action, both baddies and goodies! We see a female bounty hunter and numerous female Jedi getting into the action with the male Jedi that we've always seen before. Amidala more than pulls her weight as well, and again exhibits far more brains than Anakin (like this has to be pointed out more than once).
Yoda and Count Dooku's duel. Think the bunny from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail", only with a lightsaber. I jest but it is so cool to see what Jedi whammies Yoda is capable of!
Costumes/visuals. Always worthy of comment. We see the first stormtroopers, and they look just enough like stormtroopers to be recognizable as such but are clearly sporting an earlier version of the masks. Amidala's clothes are stunning, as usual (she does wear a white outfit that seems to be a direct reference to what Princess Leia wears in "A New Hope", but they could have given the poor girl a bra). What was most interesting for me was seeing the variations of Jedi garb (always in beige and brown, but differences according to species) and the garb of the Coruscant locals. I can't help it, I've already ordered the "Visual Dictionary" for Ep II so I can have detailed stills of all of the goodies :)
The double-dealings and secret plans to bring the Republic to war. Probably boring to most of the audience, particularly the kids, but I found it interesting the layers involved. Each "side" has such convoluted reasoning and involvement with the other group to the point that it seems impossible that everyone won't be pulled in. It was kind of jarring to see stormtroopers helping Jedi on the battlefield though.

So, good movie. Not sure I want to see it again in theaters, but definitely on DVD when it eventually comes out.