I saw the 12:21 am showing early this morning.
Loved most of it, especially after I told the 14-15 year olds behind my row making the "Padme and droid dildo" Beavis and Butthead jokes to shut the **** up.
The first act was great - the space battle in Coruscant orbit was amazing. Never seen anything like it, anywhere. The amount of detail and realism ILM included was a generation ahead of anything that's been out on film or TV.
The second act was meh. Bad dialogue, okay performances. I thought Ian McDiarmid (Palpatine) started out great, but the weird thing was his performances got worse the more "evil" he was required to become. He was fantastic in Return of the Jedi, but instead of "chillingly evil" he came off more as "creepy disfigured pedophile" towards the end.
The darker the movie got, the better the performances got, except for Natalie Portman's and McDiarmid's. Hayden Christensen does "angry and going to kill everything" better then he does teen angst or lovey-dovey crap.
Lightsaber duels were spot on, except McDiarmid isn't very convincing in action sequences. When he gives that creepy, toothy close-up grin and does that clumsy lunge with his lightsaber (he does it twice in the movie), it's pretty cringe-worthy.
The third act was OMFG good. It was like a Greek tragedy, watching all the missed opportunities and blown chances to avert the ascendancy of evil. Because the Jedi are as flawed as the Sith in some ways, all the pieces turn and click together until you're left with a Rubik's cube that looks... like the beginning of Star Wars (A New Hope).
The Duel is great. Christensen and McGregor give their best performances in the lead-up and during The Duel. The end of it... is a little unsettling, something you certainly don't expect in a Star Wars universe usually aimed at young children.
The stories, themes, and Big Ideas behind Ep. 3 are A+. How evil men don't think of themselves as evil, just serving a bigger cause, a different perspective, the greater good, or however they want to justify themselves. How good men turn down the evil path never suspecting that they are. I'll stay out of the current politics discussion, even though quite a few people were talking about it after the movie.
I like how they tie in some of the WTF moments from the previous prequels, and how Revenge makes it all work. Kind of "THATS what he was thinking" moments. Jar-Jar. Midichlorians. Shmi (Anakin's mom). Padme and Anakin. All of those (and more) turn into little chess pieces that are revealed to be moved around by Palpatine in his grand scheme. Looking back on Ep 1 and 2, I actually dislike them less because of Revenge.
This is probably one of the better movies that will come out this summer, maybe this year, even with the clunky dialogue and acting. No contrived happy endings. No deus ex machina moments. All the cute furry creatures die in this movie (well, most, anyways).
To sum it up, if you can overlook acting and dialogue for the ideas, story, and visual impact, go see it. If you can't, you probably don't want to watch it.