• Two hours and twenty-two minutes?
  • Fuuuuuuuck me.
  • Wait, can I make a wish?
  • You’re allowed to make a wish at 11:11, but what if the tragically flawed film you’re watching is 2:22?
  • Your wishes should be heard in that situation, I believe.
  • Here is mine: I wish I were doing anything but this.
  • I got, like, five books going right now.
  • The new Ronan Farrow joint,
  • Biography of Sam Cooke.
  • Latest edition of The Best American Sports Writing.
  • But nooooooooooooo.
  • Attack of the fucking Clones.
  • Okay, so what’s going on with the Star Wars?
  • Is this Naboo?
  • All planets in Star Wars have one climate, as we know.
  • Hoth is ice.
  • Tatooine is desert.
  • Naboo is CG.
  • Hey, an explosion.
  • I do love when shit blows up.
  • In some films, nothing at all blows up.
  • I can’t stand those movies.
  • Ever see that flick where Anthony Hopkins plays a butler who’s secretly in love with Glenn Close or some lady who kinda looks like Glenn Close?
  • They just hang out in castles and suppress their feelings at one another.
  • No kung fu,
  • That’s not the content I crave.
  • And now we come to two of the Prequel’s fatal flaws:
    • Everything is boring.
    • Everyone’s a fucking moron.
  • Look at this bullshit:

  • Jus’ sittin’ around havin’ a chinwag.
  • Bubba!
  • Fetch me up mah whittlin’!
  • This is not to say that a conversation between two (or more) seated participants must necessarily be boring.
  • Remember the scene with Hans Landa and Farmer Perdit in Inglorious Basterds?
  • Ooh, what tension.
  • George Lucas does not do that.
  • Characters sit.
  • And they talk.
  • Then there’s a screen-wipe.
  • And, like I mentioned, everyone’s a fucking moron.
  • Palpatine doesn’t do a heel turn in the third film.
  • He’s openly, blatantly, gleefully malevolent from the get-go.
  • Cackling and rubbing his hands together and saying obviously evil shit.
  • And these MAGICAL, MIND-READING WIZARDS have no clue.
  • Dumbasses.
  • And now we get an action sequence.
  • Boba Fett tried to kill Natalie Portman, whom My Boyfriend and Calvin Klein were protecting.
  • They were protecting her by leaving her alone in a room with a giant window.
  • Again: fucking morons.
  • (I will call Hayden Christiansen “Calvin Klein” because he reminds me of an underwear model: he’s very pretty, and I don’t need to hear him speak.)
  • Why does Coruscant look like Blade Runner?
  • Were the Coruscantians also fearful of Japan taking over the world in the 80’s?
  • Anyway, Calvin Klein is chasing a bounty hunter who’s also a shape shifter that was was hired by a different bounty hunter to…oh, who cares?
  • Honestly, man.
  • The planet is dying.
  • We have no more glaciers.
  • Tom Petty is dead.
  • And yet this is how I spend my time.
  • At least the characters in The Road spent their end of the world getting some exercise in.
  • I’m gonna see in the apocalypse at home, bitching about my WiFi strength.
  • Oh, god, they’re in a cantina.
  • It’s Star Wars, so there’s gotta be a cantina.
  • That’s what the song El Paso and Star Wars have in common: both require a cantina.
  • But Rosa’s cantina did not contain any Rodian bounty hunters or Twi’lek dancers.
  • Cartoon Yoda looks so cheap.
  • The Mandalorian made a wonderful decision to use a puppet for Baby Yoda as much as possible.
  • You might not notice, but your brain did.
  • A REPEATED NOTE: It is difficult to discuss the Prequels without merely reiterating the points of the great Mike Stoklasa at Red Letter Media, whose reviews spawned a billion imitators, none of whom are any good.

  • Holy shit, Calvin Klein is a creep.
  • How did he bag Natalie Portman?
  • Wait.
  • Hold up.
  • Rose Byrne is in this?

  • Oh, poor Rose Byrne.
  • You are better than this, Rose.
  • You can do comedy, drama, accents, everything.
  • AND you married Bobby Cannavale.
  • That’s some damn fine marryin’, Rosie.
  • YOUNGLINGS!
  • Not “children.”
  • Cuz otherwise, they would have had to say that Calvin Klein killed a bunch of children.
  • But he didn’t
  • He killed younglings.
  • Much better.
  • Look at these little bastards:

  • I hope the other younglings bullied that ugly fuck in the back.
  • That kid’s too ugly to have a happy childhood.
  • This scene also displays one of the larger discrepancies in the Star Wars Universe: How does one train a Jedi?
  • The Prequels will have us believe that Jedis must be raised in a monastic setting, and their powers slowly achieved through years of study.
  • Non-Prequel films are convinced that a couple weeks of calisthenics and meditating with a crazy old man will do the trick.
  • Who is right?
  • We’ll never know, but luckily it doesn’t matter.
  • Another grievous (no pun intended) fault with Attack of the Clones is the structure.
  • It’s wrong.
  • If you built a dugout with this structure, it would collapse and kill the entire Little League team.
  • My Boyfriend does have a much better haircut in this one than in Phantom Menace.

  • I’d ride that man like a Bantha.
  • Which would not make me gay.
  • The cuddling afterwards would, but not the sex; Ewen McGregor is so pretty that sex with him counts as straight.
  • Ewen McGregor?
  • I’d like to see me in McGregor.
  • Attack of the bones, knowwhatImean?
  • Something something clones.
  • Other thing, other thing Jango Fett.
  • Isn’t Jango Fett a Mandalorian?
  • Because he’s got his helmet off.
  • And we learned from The Mandalorian teevee show that, in their culture, they don’t do that.
  • It’s almost like all of this shit is being made up along the way.
  • Ugh, love scene.
  • Well, kinda.
  • This is the outfit that Natalie Portman has chosen to tell Calvin Klein she doesn’t wanna fuck him:

  • Listen, I know the term “cocktease” has been relegated to the Problem Attic, and rightly so, but come the fuck on.
  • Put your damn titties away.
  • And extinguish the damn fire.
  • Is Space Barry White playing on the stereo?
  • Enthusiasts, I am a feminist.
  • I don’t play the “look what she was wearing” game.
  • BUT LOOK WHAT SHE’S WEARING.
  • Her tiara is saying “No,” but her boobies are saying “Fondle away.”
  • Hey!
  • Kung fu!
  • Janky Fett and My Boyfriend are kicking one another in the face.
  • Niiiiiiice.
  • Although I do not know why people insist on punching Mandalorians in the face.
  • In The Mandalorian, Gina Carano punched the Mandalorian right in the face four or five times.
  • That seems counter-productive.
  • Another car chase.
  • God, is this punishment?
  • I’m not saying I don’t deserve it; I do.
  • But I just wanna know where I stand with The Lord.
  • Anyway, Janky is chasing My Boyfriend and keeps shooting missiles that sound precisely like the low E-string on a Les Paul.
  • BWOW!
  • No.
  • Wait.
  • It’s an A string.
  • Positive.
  • I literally grabbed my guitar and played along until I got the right note.
  • That’s how bored I am.
  • So, Natalie Portman and Calvin Klein go back to Tatooine to find his mother, and they visit Young Uncle Ben and Young Aunt Beru and drink Young Blue Milk.
  • Natalie is wearing this:

  • And somehow the conversation is not solely concerned with her choice of toppermost.
  • Enthusiasts, that is a toppermost.
  • I know a toppermost when I see one.
  • You think Josh Meyers has banged Natalie Portman?
  • I would bet not, although I am equally sure that Josh made a run at her.
  • She probably ran him off by talking about books or something.
  • Anyhoo, Calvin Klein runs off into the desert looking for his mommy but then he kills all the sand-people.
  • And Yoda senses it from ACROSS THE FUCKING GALAXY but is still shocked when it turns out that Palpatine is evil and Calvin is a douche.
  • The Force is, it seems, wonky.
  • Are there dead spots in The Force?
  • Places where it just cuts out like the satellite radio in my car does at certain intersections?
  • Another great failure of AOTC‘s script is the utter lack of a villain.
  • Who’s the Big Bad here?
  • There’s a shitload of henchmen, but no Big Bad.
  • Emperor isn’t the Emperor yet.
  • Count Dookula doesn’t show up until 90 minutes in, at which point the audience has been pummeled into mental retardation.
  • I said it.
  • I said it, and I stand by it.
  • I don’t care if I get canceled: Attack of the Clones made me retarded.
  • If my brain is a river, then this movie has dumped a dead elk upstream.
  • Everything within me is now poisoned and sour.
  • Okay, wait another second.
  • They’re on Tatooine.
  • Not even in the built-up part.
  • The boondocks of Tatooine.
  • When Calvin Klein came back from killing all the Arabs Tusken Raiders, Natalie Portman’s hair looked like this:

  • This is Natalie Portman one scene later, still in the same location:

  • WHO DID HER HAIR?
  • Look how complicated that shit is!
  • Don’t tell me Aunt Beru did that bullshit.
  • What’s happening?
  • They’re badly green-screened in a factory that makes computer graphics.
  • And Threepio’s there for “comic relief.”
  • I am not relieved.
  • This comic relief is not relieving.
  • And Artoo can fly.
  • It would be astonishing how much functionality Artoo lost between the Prequels and the OT, if one did not keep in mind that George Lucas is a terrible filmmaker and all this shit was made up along the way.
  • There are coherent trilogies.
  • Lord of the Rings makes sense across all three films.
  • And…uh…
  • Okay, there is a coherent trilogy.
  • Every single other film trilogy was just a movie that did well, and so garnered sequels.
  • STAR WARS WASN’T INTENDED TO BE A SAGA.
  • It was a stand-alone space romp.
  • Completely self-contained.
  • There was room for a follow-up, in that Darth Vader was not killed at the end, but no sequel was explicitly set up.
  • Anywoogle, Calvin Klein, Natalie Portman, and My Boyfriend have re-united on a bug planet and they have to fight a Space Rhino, a Space Crab, and a Tasmanian Space-Devil.
  • I just don’t care.
  • Pew pew.
  • Zip zap.
  • Natalie Portman’s midriff is sweet.
  • Good riff.
  • Got some ab definition, popped-out obliques, sexy nave.
  • I don’t say “navel.”
  • I shorten that shit.
  • Natalie Portman’s midriff does not shorten my shit, though.
  • There’s elongation going on.
  • FOODSTUFFS I WOULD EAT OFF OF NATALIE PORTMAN’S MIDRIFF:
    • Sushi.
    • Charcuterie.
    • Assortment of spicy cheese.
    • Cobbler (peach, apple, assorted).
  • How can something be so busy and yet so lazy at the same time?
  • The clonetroopers look like crap because they’re all 100% CG, and they’re all 100% CG because having a dozen guys in costume was too much of a hassle for George Lucas.
  • “We’ll do it in post.”
  • Everything on Attack of the Clones was done in post, including the script.
  • I hate this movie and I haven’t even been paying attention to it.
  • Saw it in the same place at Phantom Menace: Mann’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.
  • Which really is the place you wanna see a Star Wars movie.
  • Saw it with the same buddy, too, and once again on opening night.
  • Everyone was cheering and whooping just like for the first film.
  • And then I went back on Wednesday afternoon to see it by myself.
  • I did not cheer or whoop.
  • I again needed to take two smoke breaks.
  • God, this is dire.
  • The only way to enjoy this lightsaber fight between Cartoon Yoda and Count Dookula is to picture Frank Oz in a recording studio making all the little noises and grunts that Yoda makes while he leaps about.
  • “Errphf!”
  • “Graah!”
  • I bet Frank Oz was pissy with the engineer.
  • He’s kind of a prick.
  • Wait, no, you have to be kidding me.
  • 1920 words?
  • I wrote over 1,900 words on this vomit-abortion?
  • Fuck me.
  • I’m stopping before I hit 2,000.
  • Just on principle.
  • I still have principles; they’re around here somewhere.