Oh, I have a bad feeling about this.
Obi-Wan

This film is heralded as the best out of the Star Wars Prequels. Now that right there is something to be proud of. Going by Adam Cook's rating system I feel that I might be cheating in giving this 2 stars for "disappointing" because a clear argument could be made for it being "weak".

The scenes between Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman are better by the fact that Christensen smiles once or twice more then he did in Attack of the Clones. Without the comparison however their scenes are just plain horrible with some dialogue that is beyond atrocious.

The story arc of Anakin Skywalker being "seduced" by the Dark Side is one of the clumsiest things I've ever seen on film. Apparently he wasn't as much seduced as he was just told to do it. The audience is told that Anakin and Palpatine have become close friends. That piece of information is supposed to be enough to make it believable that Anakin will just about do anything he's told to do by Palpatine and believe anything that comes out of his mouth. It's just lazy and clumsy storytelling.

I don't think you'll see better special effects in another film, the only problem is there is no self-restraint in most of the movie. Just because you have the technology to put a thousand different things happening at once in a single scene doesn't mean you should. More doesn't mean better. Most of the movie is pretty to look at though.

This is definitely better then the two previous films, it just doesn't add up to a good film. After watching these three movies in one day I've come to the conclusion that George Lucas doesn't actually understand why the original Star Wars films were a cultural phenomenon. 35 years ago people weren't scared to tell Lucas when something didn't work in a script, or something else was a bad idea. The original films were a collaboration between Lucas and other artists with him at the helm. The prequels are all Lucas with his army of "yes men" helping. It also feels like he did these movies because he had too and not because he wanted to. There's no passion here. That's my 2 cents anyways.