-- Christopher Lee as Count Dracula in Dracula A.D. 1972

Acting is both an art and a skill. It takes time, patience and a little bit of talent. As an actor or actress, you need to perfect your style, smooth out your characters, and actually learn to live in their skin.

On the other hand, to be a critic, all you have to do is show up.

Critics abound on acting because anyone can have an opinion on it. It's not just the realm of professional personalities like Leonard Maltin and Roger Ebert -- they just get paid for it. But ask your mother or your father or your friends about a certain movie they really, really liked or really, really hated and they will promptly bring up the acting. I guarantee it.

Star Wars has been lambasted over the years for its supposedly bad acting and horrendous dialogue. Some examples of bad dialogue:

"But I was going to the Toshi station to pick up some power converters!"

"Without precise calculations, we'd fly right through a star or bounce too close to a supernova and that would end your trip real quick, wouldn't it?"

"I don't know where you get your delusions, laser brain."

Some examples of bad acting:

"I know ... somehow, I've always known."

"Beware, Viceroy. The federation has gone too far this time."

"It's all Obi-Wan's fault! He's holding me back!"

Most of the time, these lines will bring a smile to the lips of a fan and a wince from a non-fan. But to a professional movie critic -- well, you think they'd been shot. Most critics will leap on these lines as an example as how horrible Star Wars really is: The Opium of the Masses.

Let us be fair. As far as the dialogue is concerned, the critics may have a valid point. I never cease to be amazed at how Harrison Ford and Alec Guinness got out half their sentences in A New Hope. It's almost impossible to say the lines quickly without gasping for air: "How long before you can make the jump to light speed?" (Breathe).

Basically, the whole point of dialogue is to make it seem as if the character would actually say such things; that the character's second nature would take over in times of stress or danger, and say what's on his or her mind. Highly technical words may be the order of the day in Star Wars, just like acronyms would be in the military. Acronyms sound much like a foreign language to the uninitiated, almost like the nonsense syllables in pig Latin. If understand the code, you know what is being said. If you don't, then you are one bewildered fellow.

To bring this feat off, the actors have to be good, and they have to sound credible. Alec Guinness is legendary. Harrison Ford has talent. Mark Hamill is fine. Ian McDirmand is excellent. Ewan Macgregor is good. Billy Dee Williams is so-so. Hayden Christensen is struggling, and Natalie Portman is awful. These performances cannot be blamed on the dialogue alone, but the actual acting. First things first.

The Dialogue

Who makes dialogue? The writers do, of course. It all has to do with how talented the writers are, but it also has something to do with who the writers are, i.e. where they grew up, who they are exposed to, what lifestyle they have. You would not give a street themed movie like Boyz 'n the Hood to a white Anglo-Saxon yuppie writer who is used to adapting dialogue for use in John Cusack's High Fidelity. The dialogue would be inane. Just think Dr. Evil and Mini-Me singing "Just the Two of Us." You get the point. Or if that's not enough, rent Warren Beatty's Bulworth.

Another factor in dialogue composition is the time it is written. An excellent movie in 1955 is considered dated now. James Dean sounds idiotic in Rebel without a Cause today. It's not his fault; it's just how writers in 1955 thought disgruntled teenagers spoke: "You're tearing me apart!" Yeah, right.

Other examples include Marty with Ernest Borgenine or On the Waterfront with Marlon Brando. These are both excellent Academy Award-winning movies for their time, but the dialogue is now dated and awful. We know that poverty-stricken roustabouts do not speak like Marlon Brando, who sounds like the brooding method actor we know that he is: "It was you, Charlie...I coulda been a contendah ... " Charlton Heston, a pretty talented actor himself, commented that method acting was a lot like "masturbation." Humph.

The point is, as a movie ages, so does the dialogue. A typical movie filmed in the 1970's or '80's sounds dopey, like "Valley Girl" or "Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo".

In contrast, Star Wars is the exception. The dialogue transcends the time it was written because you can't nail it down to a specific time period or a section of history. Some of it sounds futuristic, but then again some of it does not. There are little tidbits that slip in from time to time: "What the hell are you doing?" "Then I'll see you in hell!", but mostly when a character swears it's more like "Blast!" (By the way, "Blast" was a swear word in 17th century England.) The dialogue in Star Wars is not meant to be taken seriously; it's merely a way of advancing the story, of setting up the next scene. It's not a drama; it's a comic book movie. George Lucas is not concerned about character development, and he's basically said so more than a few times. He's concerned with telling the story. It's up to the actors and actresses to bring those words to life. The infamous line by Mark Hamill quoted above is funny. It's silly, but in a good way. It's not harmful to the story, and it's an innocent comment. Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford were able to pull off their lines with aplomb, even when it was decidedly less-than-stellar dialogue.

The Acting

All in all, the performers in the Original trilogy were capable. They were thrown together in an ensemble; they worked well with each other, and most importantly: they had fun with the material. It wasn't spiritual, it just old fashioned slam-bang fun. Another major factor in acting is how performers get along with their co-stars. In the case of Star Wars, there were a few veteran actors who buoyed the performance of the neophytes. Lucas's securing of Alec Guinness was a tremendous boon; without him, the movie would note have fared as well. The addition of Peter Cushing was, in the words of critic Leonard Maltin: " ... a hip homage to B-movie ethics." Gone with the Wind it ain't. There was no going crazy with the material, no method acting. It was all straight-forward, to-the-point, let's-get- to-the-action performances. It worked for all three movies. However, there are times where performances are quite good, like the carbon-freezing scene between Han and Leia, when Vader announces that he is Luke's father, and the soft spoken confrontation between Luke and Vader on Endor. These scenes in particular stand out because they are genuine.

A lot has been said about the acting in the original Star Wars Trilogy, most of it unfair. Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, and Carrie Fisher did a fine job. One must remember that even the great Laurence Olivier had his share of turkeys. As a matter of fact, Olivier as Shakespeare's Othello is downright laughable when viewed today. The performance isn't bad, it's just dated. Olivier in blackface would be offensive if it wasn't so damm absurd.

The Phantom Menace

The Phantom Menace had promise and major potential. Ian McDirmand was returning, and the cast was updated to some of the best actors around: Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, and Samuel L. Jackson. Add two generations of fans into the mix and a built-in audience. TPM couldn't possibly go wrong.

It did, most regrettably.

The reasons for this were simple: the dialogue, and the performances. TPM was a spectacle; chock full of digital surprises of every kind. The special effects guys kept promoting the hell out of the fact that they knew how to make a CGI "performance" credible, how they knew how to present a performance that is as rich and as dignified as a person, how they squeezed every once of human feeling and gestures out of Jar-Jar Binks, Boss Nass, et al. Lucas and his creative team at Lucasfilm felt so strongly about this that Lucas actually forgot to direct the human actors. Liam Neeson is a great actor, one of the greatest actors on the planet, but he still needs a director to show him what's going on in the scene. For most of the movie, Neeson mechanically shuffled as if he were sleepwalking! Sam Jackson had very little to do except sit around and look judicious, and Natalie Portman's "performance" was actually worse than any CGI character, including Jar-Jar. She sounded monotone in her guise as Queen Amidala, and she was only slightly less boring as Padme. Insert the stale dialogue that is used for staging an action scene, and viola! You have Bantha poodoo performances. Star Wars: The Phantom Menace experienced healthy box office receipts, but at what cost? Its lack of "heart" (read: acting) caused many a critic to pan the film and its technical achievements. The fact that Lucasfilm was breaking new ground meant nothing to these critics, who desired only to bring Lucas down from his high horse. He'd forgotten about the human side of the story and focused on the technological, they alleged. And they were right. Lucas himself said in Lucasfilm's 1983's documentary From Star Wars to Jedi:

"A special effect is just a tool, a means of telling a story. A special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing ... I mean, Threepio is just a hunk of plastic, and without Tony Daniels in there it just isn't anything at all."

Exactly. So what happened? Nowadays, I'm waiting for Lucas to announce that he's not going to hire actors anymore because the Screen Actor's Guild is such a pain in the arse. I'm waiting for him to completely computer generate them. I can see it now -- Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace Special Edition -- Behind the Scenes:

McCallum: "You know we have the technology, George. We can rebuild it. Not for nothing, but Natalie Portman's performance is really bad. It hurts the film."

Lucas: "Yeah. She's a bum. Let's digitally remove her from every dammed frame and create a CGI cutie to take her place. It'll be as I originally intended."

Attack of the Clones

Where to begin? Most critics have a problem with the film, and the ones who do not sound a wee bit fulsome (By the way, Attack of the Clones was panned by Roger Ebert, but he claimed "Bulworth" was a masterstroke. Go figure). Attack is a finely crafted film that a lot of effort and money went into. Does it show on screen? Yes and No. The action scenes are, as always, done well. The footage of the arena battle and of the fight between Obi-Wan and Jango Fett is excellent. It is enough to keep a teenager dreaming heroically for years.

Sadly, the dialogue is dreadful, even for a Star Wars film. The characters repeat several lines that have been done to death, including "I have a bad feeling about this." Anakin and Obi-wan are represented well, though. Hayden Christensen is good, despite some weak acting: "It's all Obi-Wan's fault! He holding me back!" He then proceeds to throw something across the room in a weak-ass throw, almost like a girl. This is the Chosen one? No Force throw? C'mon, Hayden, you can do better than that. With time and training, he will.

Ewan McGregor returns with style, especially when he rebukes Anakin in Senator Amidala's chambers: "And you will learn your place,  young one." His acting is forceful and temperate, yet never effete.

Natalie Portman's acting is atrocious, once again. She's a pleasure to look at though, a veritable re-incarnation of a Renaissance beauty, complete with leather corset. It's enough to keep a teenager (and some adults) dreaming lustily for years. The only thing is, she can't utter a line to save her life. Her weak "No" after seeing her senatorial decoy blown apart leaves me wondering how many takes were ruined before Lucas said "Oh, the hell with it! Just put it in." There are some bright spots; however. She's definitely improved since Episode I. She really looks uncomfortable when Anakin reveals his love to her, complete with her twitching and squirming. In the scene where Anakin leaves to find his mother, her heartfelt "Anakin!" actually tugged at my heart strings. Her comforting of Anakin after he tells her of the slaughter he's committed was also pretty good. Alas, this stroke of theatrical skill did not keep up for long. Her ridiculous recovery from her fall from the Clone gunship nearly brought down the house.

Of course, Attack of the Clones was made into a guilty pleasure by the appearance of Christopher Lee as the scenery-chewing Count Dooku. Lee, a veteran of Hammer horror films (with his co-star, the late Peter Cushing) is no stranger to B-movie fare. Some of the more famous movies he's stared in are the Fu-Manchu films, The Man with the Golden Gun, and Dracula A.D. 1972, which is, in the words of Leonard Maltin, "jarring." History repeats itself, because like Peter Cushing, Lee is a "hip homage to B-movie ethics." Lee has effectively saved more than one silly movie from oblivion because of his astute thespian skills.

Is the acting in the new trilogy up to par? No, it isn't, because there really can be no comparison. It's a different set of movies, a different cast, and a different story. We will have to see if it ages well, like the Original Trilogy. And I have a sneaking suspicion that with repeated viewings, it will.

(Gregory Ellis grew up watching Christopher Lee's B-movies on WPHL Channel 17 in 1980's Philadelphia. They haven't stunted his growth at all. He isn't an actor, but he and his wife have both studied the craft a bit and like to dissect performances.)