movie review!

surprise, surprise- star wars actually turned out to be pretty satisfying. on most counts, that is, excluding the acting of hayden christensen. to put it nicely, it leaves Much To Be Desired, or, as some hollywood actor recently commented, 'calling it wooden is an insult to all puppets'. can't beg to oppose.

actually, the main problem with christensen is probably aesthetic. prepubescent girls listen up: hayden christensen is NOT an example of cute! contrary to popular belief, not every male between the ages of 16-28 who stars in some major blockbuster must, by default, be cute. i mean, anyone with eyes can see that this guy is really just a jude-law wannabe. the only thing that's going for him is his bod. i have to admit though, he really does look hot without his shirt. like in the scene where he wakes up in the middle of the night after having the nightmare about padme dying, and all you can see of him is his shirtless torso- i swear, there was a collective gasp from all the females in the cinema! honestly, his is the most perfect bod i've ever seen! plus, because of the dim lighting, you can't even see his face in that shot, so there's nothing spoiling the nakedness of his rippling biceps and washboard abs. *gazes dreamily for a moment*

but, like in all movies, good things never last. just a few seconds later, three things spoil the scene:

1. the lighting increases and his facial features become visible.
2. he gets up and puts on a robe.
3. even worse- Pregnant Padme gets up from bed and diffuses whatever hotness is still radiating from the glimpse of his abs with her whining.

also, i don't get how come padme always looks so perfectly made up. when she gets up from bed, she's fully and immaculately clothed, right down to her pearl accesories and hair, which is unconvincing of anyone who's just rolled out of bed. what happened to bad hair days, hello?? and why is she wearing clothes anyway? during the rare nights when they're together, shouldn't anakin be showing her the Dark Side, as opposed to dreaming of her giving birth??

anyway, as expected, there were also cheesy moments galore. before the movie, me and erica had made a pact to read out the chinese subtitles during the love scenes in retaliation to the person sitting in front of us who had read out the "Once upon a time, in a galaxy far away" prologue. but alas, our inadequacy in the chinese language struck again, as we realised quite early on that we couldn't read the subtitles fast enough to correspond with the actual screen dialogue. what a pity; next time i shall watch a few chinese shows beforehand to prepare myself.

also, there were lots of pauses between dialogues, where i could totally envision the characters saying something completely unrelated to the scene. like whenever palpatine said something dramatically evil to seduce anakin, there would be like these long 5 second pauses, in which one can only think that christensen was struggling to remember his lines. to give him credit though, it was during these moments that he fully showcased his mastery of the confused expression, complete with the corrugated brows and slight pout. i can understand how the wide-eyed, pensive look might work really well for girls doing the whole i'm-all-boobs-and-no-brains bimbo act, but hello, darth vader is an epic character, so the least you're hoping for are quick reflexes. and that's not to mention the overload of melodrama, like right after anakin chops off mace windu's arm and sends him flying to his death, or "scampering like a wild pig" as darryl pointed out, no doubt fondly reminded of himself. anyway, right after anakin does this arguably powerful bit of lightsaber action, he suddenly collapses on this little cushiony thing and exclaims "what have i done"! i guess it's good to know even the best of us feel bad after murdering someone.

on the whole though, the movie was pretty damn good- saved in part by the excellent CGI work. i can only imagine how many light years it'd take anybody to manually 3d-studio-max just 10 seconds of yoda's appearance, so certainly this acheivement is of equally epic proportions. and if you're looking for more cheesy teenage drama love scenes, fret not, for episode 3 doesn't fail to deliver. (anakin to padme: "you look so beautiful tonight". padme: "i'm beautiful only because i'm so in love with you".) my movie going experience however, was nearly jeopardised by some quick tempers before the start of the show. like after i successfully helped wang, erica and darryl crash the show, a bunch of self-righteous individuals started expressing their being "uncomfortable with the idea". well dude, that's just too bad, because this is a school thing and this is what people do at school things, duh. and also, a particular ying liang was driving everybody nuts because he was so anxious to be there to "chope" good seats. like at 530, he was already herding everybody out of the canteen because he was sure that we needed to be there one and a half hours beforehand in order to get seats. 'tis kiasu-ism personified, but, as wang says, he's good "housewife material". concurred!

so, if you haven't already watched episode 3- watcha waiting for!