Caveat Lector

David, in a fit of morbid curiosity, took Star Wars II: Clone Wars out of the video store. He invited me to watch it, warning me that one 20-second scene would leave me howling with wrath.

Now, I can’t possibly manage to express how badly this movie sucked. It sucked beyond any conceivable expression of pure unadulterated suckitude. The “romantic” leads were stunningly horrendous, both of them, not to mention that it is an utter waste of such screenwriting talent as George Lucas has (and, baby, that ain’t much) to try to give Harrison Ford snark to Ewan McGregor, who utterly lacks the snark gene. (Nice-looking guy, decent actor, quite believable as a proto-Alec-Guinness—but no, I repeat, no snark anywhere in him.)

The music sucked. The extras sucked (with a couple of exceptions). The cinematography often sucked. The plot sucked. The screenplay sucked beyond belief. How many more ways can a movie possibly suck?

To be scrupulously fair: The costumes did not suck. (I quite liked all but one or two of Natalie Portman’s and the new Naboo queen’s getups.) The design of ships and aliens did not suck. The kid playing Boba Fett conspicuously failed to suck (especially compared to the whiny bratling playing Anakin in movie one). Christopher Lee and Ian McDiarmid also conspicuously avoided sucking. (Actual acting, involving decent line-readings. Wow. What a strange thing to have in a George Lucas movie.)

I did surprise David, though, by not howling at the 20-second archivist scene, which anybody who knows me and has seen the movie has probably guessed was the scene David was referring to. I mean, this is George “never met a stereotype he didn’t cling to like grim death” Lucas here. Of course his archivist is going to be a clueless, vinegary spinster.

What had me howling (as David will attest) was the Vast and Galaxy-Shaking Importance pinned to (*gasp*) Something Missing From The Archives. If I’d rolled my eyes as hard as that howler warranted, I’d have rolled them right into the next county. Sheesh.