And so, let it be known that Miss Padme (or Amidala, or whatever it is she goes by) was far more bearable than Mary Jane Watson. The latter spent far too much time flouncing around in pink dresses, flipping her nifty red hair, emitting absolutely ghastly screams, running away from her wife-beater clad guardian and off into the wonderful world of table-waiting where evidently she didn't earn enough money to purchase adequate undergarments, and heaven help us, is she still shrieking her perfectly coiffed head off from her helpless sprawl atop that crumbling building?

Kirsten Dunst was better in Jumanji and Tobey whatshisname needs to learn how to convey various facial expressions using more muscles than those situated around his eyebrows. And no dear old auntie should ever let a man with "villain" scrawled all over him anywhere near a Thanksgiving turkey, much less the carving knives.

I did like the beginning, though. Peter Parker wasn't so bad before he went all heroic. Shame, that, superheroes always being so heroic.

So ends the Spider-Man yapping.

As for the other, it was the opposite. The beginning, with exception of those lovely yellow letters, made my teeth itch; afterward, when things started blowing up every few seconds, matters improved.

Excuse me, the littlest Gorgon is on a rampage; I'll continue this later. Fret not.

**********************************************

All right, someone's going to pay... The little Gorgon has a friend staying the night and the lads thought it might be interesting to slam open the box-room door while yelling at the top of their lungs and observe the reaction of the occupant. I hope their ears ring for at least a week... they brought it on themselves.

The little Gorgon then proceeded to unceremoniously bark me off the 'Net so that he and his compatriot could make some vastly important call to a girl called Torrie. During this brief respite from human and technological contact, I regained my composure, logged back on before they could call little Torrie back, and if anyone comes though the door again, I have a Sweet Valley Twins book at my elbow and am prepared to throw it. No doubt the little Gorgon'll throw it back if I do; he'll have to keep the upper hand as long as his friend's around. Adolescents and their elaborate, idiotic hierarchy of absolutely everything that doesn't matter... I never had any part of such a thing, I swear.

My throat hurts. Hope the neighbors weren't within earshot of my Mary Jane Watson impression.

Now, where were we? Attack of the Clones, neh?

Right. For the most part, as far as the romance scenes (eh? there were romance scenes?) were concerned, all I can do is nod blankly at all the other reviews I've read concerning them. Way to pick up a girl, Ani, tell her you don't like sand, but you like her because she's not sand. Be still my heart... And at least Tobey whatshisname utilized his eyebrows; Hayden Christenson just leered. I have a feeling Natalie Portman would have done a lot better if she'd had more to work with; she's good at playing the iron-spined heroine as long as the characters she's meant to bounce off are on the same level. As it was, she wound up laughing desperately at the most absurd things. And the terribly trite bit about being in agony, blahblahblah, had me frantically knotting my hands together to keep from covering my ears. Not to mention she had to put up with some rather annoying conversations:

"Are you hungry?"

"The shifter's broken."

For heaven's sake, Anakin, I didn't ask if the shifter was broken and I don't give a flying Fuzzum how good you are at fixing things no matter how traumatized you are after finally deciding to look up your mother and conveniently dropping in just in time for her to somehow recognize you behind the droopy jaw and funny hairstyle before expiring in your arms. Drink your blue milk, dangnammit, and stop angsting so I can go chat with Owen and Beru (ooh! pieces're falling together!).

Except Amidala's too kind-hearted to launch into anything like that. Cue the compassionate side, cue the flaring temper, cue the bad-guy music, cue the dangerously intriguing Palpatine, cue the whole hand-hacking thing, and this, children, is what we call foreshadowing.

Her action scenes were infinitely more bearable, such as the assembly line incident and the point where she was distracted and suddenly found herself wearing a one-sleeved crop top. Cheer up, girlie, even with the hideous claw marks, it's a sight better than Leia's purple-skirt ensemble.

Purple... that reminds me... I wouldn't mind having a purple light saber. And possibly a little green man with an extraneous walking stick to bounce off the walls with it, because it's surprisingly amusing to watch. I'm on the bandwagon again here; it was refreshing to finally see Yoda in action. Four movies of everyone deferring to and extolling the little thing and now it turns out he's actually capable of more than just levitating after all. (Quote that struck my fancy: "Master Obi-Wan lost a planet has. How embarrasing...") Even if his comment about the shadow of darkness (or something to that effect) falling over the Republic reminded me of Winston Churchill and the Iron Curtain speech. I blame Mao for that one.

And Obi-Wan is to be commended for his stiff upper lip and generously sprinkled Briticisms. Cheers, old chap. To say nothing of his tolerance as far as putting up with our for-the-time protagonist goes. Oy.

And now I'm off to bed to have scary dreams about long-necked cloning aliens and kid bounty hunters.

Adieu.