Review of Will's Review for Star Wars: Episode II: Attack of the Clones [gasp]

After having seen Star Wars: Episode 2: Attack of the Clones myself and having read Will’s review I thought that I should also write a review of my own. So this is my review of Will’s review of the aforementioned movie. (If you haven’t read it, then you can decide if you want to read it from this review). I would just like to state now that I agree with most of the things the review said, aside from the comment about acting. I found Hayden Christiansen to be terribly boring, but that’s really my only complaint. Also, I would also like to complain about the fact that the love story was very cheesy. But enough about my complaining, back to the review at hand.

The review was pretty decent, it had it’s highlights here and there but let’s not forget that it was just a review. I can say right of the bat that judging from the way this was written, Will has experiences with reviews, either from reading plenty of them or writing them. He was definitely touched or more like tainted by the other critics that write reviews for a living. I liked how the review flowed very well and by no means did it do the usual crap of a review by an amateur who got struck with inspiration or a large metal pipe.

The first thing that I want to cover is the structure of the review and what I want to say about it is that it was structured like every other review out there, maybe even this one, but I don’t know that yet because I’m not done. I found it boring that he had it structured this way, especially after expecting so much different. He has indeed been tainted by the works of critics. You can see the general flow of a review right away from the introduction, to the pros, then cons, and lastly the grade. This structure works well but it sounds like a political debate. I am very surprised he didn’t say “Now for the rebuttal” instead of “Now for my complaints.” But you have to give him credit though for the flawless work in showing exactly what his opinion is on this movie. Oh and I forgot to mention that summary of the story is part of the structure in reviews and Will’s is not exempt.

“…fizzled out like a lightsaber in a pool of midichlorians and Gungans.” I just wanted to point out this line in the review because it has very good diction and syntax. It is very entertaining and because of the fact that it was the fourth sentence in the review I expected some description of the same variety. Unfortunately, I was disappointed. The diction of the rest of the review never gets past the usual jargon of the unemotional critics. Although I really can’t complain that much because it did have it’s funniness to it. (SPOILER ALERT: skip the rest of the paragraph if you don’t want spoilers) Probably the most memorable of this humor is the line “After a lot of running around through often beautifully rendered environments, our heroes finally convene in the Roman Coliseum…I mean…the planet Geonosis, and engage in an action-packed half hour long series of battles.”

Being that this is a formal article of some type, I think that it is necessary for the author to align it with justify, but this is html so I don’t think it can do that. If it was justified, it will just add to the sense that it is a real review, along with the usual pish-posh that most critics use. And speaking of critics, I think this reviewer is being entirely too critical, so on to the good things.

So this is where I say, time for the rebuttal, or reasons you might have to read the review. (As if having a review on the review does not interest you enough to read it.) The main strength of the review is that it most definitely does its job, and that is to be a review for Star Wars: Episode II. This is a big strength because it is unlike of those other reviews that just blab on about problems that are mostly unrelated. Also, there are barely any spoilers in the review and that is usually a plus, because people don’t want to be told about the fact that “Rosebud” was really his sled and that Tyler Durden is really Jack-no-name. The addition of hopes for the future as the last paragraph is indeed very much needed for it ties up the entire review.

If this review was written for the interest of just being a review, then it does its job. But if it was written to show why the people should watch the movie and judging from the fact that Will is a Star Wars fan, I would think that he would want people to see this movie, so, with that assumption in mind, I don’t think it was right that he put the worst “gripe” about he movie in the end. This will leave a bad impression in the gullible minds of the people that happen to read the review.

All in all, very solid effort on the review, especially being the first publicly announced and available review. Grading this review with the scale that it was the first try (maybe more in the career of the author) I would give this a B, but if grading this by the standards of the other more professional reviews out there, I would give this a C+.