Reclaiming His Empire

 

Political intrigue is the order of the day in the latest chapter of this blockbuster franchise, but fans need not worry that Lucas has churned out a C-Span feed with droids instead of drones. Attack of the Clones is many things: a rock-solid mystery yarn, a shaky but ultimately affecting love story, an edge-of-the-seat action flick, and, perhaps most importantly, a vast improvement over its 1999 predecessor, The Phantom Menace. Whereas Menace too often felt like an island unto itself, detached from the first three films in the series, Clones largely brings everything together, deepening the arc of the entire story by including several important (and occasionally unexpected) developments and restoring the mythological grandeur that helped establish the series in the first place. Oh, and let's not forget that it's simply a lot of fun: More than even Spider-Man, Attack of the Clones provided a welcome rush of nostalgia by reminding me what it felt like to be a kid at a matinee showing, marveling at the sights and sounds presented before me.

In truth, The Phantom Menace isn't as bad as its reputation; it's simply that, because expectations were understandably sky-high, the negatives tended to leave a more permanent aftertaste than the positives. And nothing in the film earned more negative grousing -- well, out-and-out hatred, to be accurate -- than the character Jar-Jar Binks, that computer-generated abomination who seemed to be equal parts Jerry Lewis and Stepin Fetchit. Yes, Jar-Jar does reappear in Clones -- what's more, he's even a Senator of the galactic council! Seeing the befuddled Jar-Jar attempt to expend thought on political matters will doubtless remind many viewers of the Reagan years, but in his defense, not only does Lucas limit the amount of screen time afforded to J-J but he also uses the character to advance the storyline in a way that's not only ingenious but that also cruelly serves as an affront to the character's upstanding morals (those accursed Ewoks as evidence to the contrary, it appears that Lucas has retained a smidgen of that maverick, devil-may-care spirit that informed his earlier works).

With Jar-Jar a mere footnote, Clones can deal with the real business at hand -- namely, detailing the demise of the Republic while simultaneously charting the development of Anakin Skywalker, the Jedi knight who would eventually embrace the Dark Side of the Force and transform into the all-powerful warlord Darth Vader.

Set 10 years after Episode I, this one finds the members of the Jedi order doing their best to quell the unrest within the Republic that's being stirred by the machinations of a separatist movement out to dismantle the government. (If this all sounds incomprehensible, you might want to brush up on your history by renting the other four flicks.) After an assassination attempt is made on Padme Amidala (Natalie Portman), the former Queen turned Senator, the Jedi send two of their own, master Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and apprentice Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen), to serve as her protection. While Obi-Wan travels to distant worlds to track down the mysterious figures behind the insidious murder plot, Anakin stays close to Padme's side; naturally, the close contact results in the pair falling in love, a major no-no since Jedis are forbidden to become intimate with others.

Clones sows the seeds for the luring of Anakin over to the dark side, but that's not all that's on its plate: We also witness the birth of the stormtroopers, the introduction of the bounty hunter Jango Fett (Once Were Warriors' Temeura Morrison) and his young son Boba, more prominent roles for Jedi warriors Yoda and Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson), and the beginning of the beautiful friendship between R2-D2 (Kenny Baker) and C-3PO (Anthony Daniels). There's also a certain poetry in the casting of Christopher Lee as separatist leader Count Dooku: The late Peter Cushing, Lee's close friend and frequent co-star back in the glory days of Hammer horror flicks, appeared in the first Star Wars picture, so Lee's presence here is especially gratifying. In fact, there's not much about Clones that doesn't satisfy: Even some leaden dialogue and a couple of stiff performances can't undermine the overall exuberance generated by its deft mix of effects and angst.

McGregor's underrated work in Menace found him expertly copying the mannerisms and speech patterns that Alec Guinness established while portraying the elderly Kenobi in the original trilogy; he's equally good here, making it easy to believe that this resourceful yet slightly fuddy-duddy warrior would evolve into the wizened wizard we saw in the other films. Little Jake Lloyd got hammered for his wretched work as the adolescent Anakin in Menace, but Christensen will fare better as this chapter's teenage version of the character. He struggles with some of the wooden dialogue (who wouldn't?), yet he's adept at swinging through the role's various mood changes. Yet while I felt Portman was unjustly criticized for her part in Menace -- I thought her lack of emotion suited the part of a queen with a dispassionate demeanor -- I may have misjudged that one: She's equally stiff in Clones, despite the fact that Padme is feeling great surges of romantic ardor.

Let's face it: The two big guns this summer are Spider-Man and Attack of the Clones, and who among us wasn't praying that at least one of the pair would be tolerable? The fact that both features are not only watchable but also inspired almost seems like a miracle, considering today's large turnout of big-budget busts. I don't know about you, but cinematically speaking, I'm so giddy over the early results that I'm ready to call it a day and spend the rest of the summer basking on the beach. *TRIPLE THREAT

Woody Allen (seen here with Treat Williams, Tea Leoni and Debra Messing) again assumes the mantle of writer-director-actor for his latest project, Hollywood Ending

(John Clifford/DreamWorks)

Allen Off ScreenNYC legend takes on HollywoodBy Felicia Feaster

Woody Allen has become an American icon -- an unchanging cultural commodity with instant brand recognition like Hugh Hefner or Colonel Sanders. So the experience of interviewing Allen face to face is distinctly surreal. Like the characters in his 1985 The Purple Rose of Cairo, it feels as though one is interacting with the movie screen, talking to a persona rather than a person.

In his latest film, Hollywood Ending, Allen blurs the line between reality and fantasy even more, playing filmmaker Val Waxman, who's been engaged to direct a movie about New York by a Hollywood studio, Galaxy Pictures.

Creative Loafing: Most directors are content to stand back and let the film fiction unfold without them, but you continually insert yourself into your films as a performer. Where do you think that impulse comes from?

Woody Allen: When I started, I was both a writer and a stand-up comedian. So I have no enormous impulse to act. If I never acted again it wouldn't bother me. But I started that way and sort of habitually drifted along doing it. It wouldn't bother me if I had a phone call tomorrow from Dustin Hoffman saying he would play all my roles from now on. I would be very happy.

Is that who you imagine playing you?

Well, I know he could play me better than I could play me.

Has there ever been anyone you really wanted in one of your films who wouldn't participate?

I wanted to get Jack Nicholson in Hannah and Her Sisters. And he wanted to do it, but he had a commitment. So I had to resort to using an English actor, Michael Caine, who I love, but I just didn't want to get an English actor really.

Is there some project that you've always wanted to do?

I always wanted to make a big jazz movie. I made Sweet and Lowdown but that was a small jazz movie. With big prices. But I'd like to make a big jazz movie, but the costs are so prohibitive, because you're working with a lot of music, musicians, song rights and a lot of period work. The jazz story is very circuitous and so it would cost a fortune to make.

Do you think your relationship to Hollywood is as adversarial as it's portrayed in Hollywood Ending?

It's not adversarial because I never worked in Hollywood, and they don't take me seriously in any way. They've been very nice to me, they're not bad people, but I'm not someone they're too interested in because I don't bring in high profits... I love to tease them, because they have a completely different lifestyle than the East Coast and I could never live out there. Not that I hate it, or hate the people. I just don't like that kind of weather. It would be tough for me to live in sunshine day after day and no change of seasons.

Do you find you are consistently looking for a shared quality in the women who star next to you, like Tea Leoni?

They all have a flair for being able to toss off sharp lines. You can find very good actors, actresses who are wonderful, but they don't have any flair for dealing with those lines in a very off-handed, light way. A comic actor who could really do that -- although you don't know it from most of his movies because they were silly movies -- was Bob Hope. And some of the older women, like Claudette Colbert, Rosalind Russell, Katharine Hepburn, Carole Lombard, in addition to being great actresses, could score with those one-liners.

Do you think there's some common self-effacing quality that you look for in your performers?

I always respect people more -- that's what I always loved about Diane Keaton or Tea Leoni, they're like the girls in school who were like, "I did so badly on that test," and then the test marks come back and they're always 100 or 99. That self-effacing quality is always appealing. It's so much more appealing than ones who come on strong and sell themselves and push themselves.

Those are the moments I most responded to in Hollywood Ending, the slapstick elements, because you were physically self-effacing.

I have a tendency to be self-effacing, but I deserve it [laughs]. I always start off with such grand expectations and great hopes and they always come out so disappointing to me at the end. *