Robots, Hero and Star wars

Something has happened to me. Ever since I started writing my own script and once I had joined this site, I became very sensitive to the scripts of movies I watch. This is only natural, but I fear it may be making movies less enjoyable for me. I have recently watched three movies I wish to comment on, because I think all three have lessons to be extracted from them about screenwriting and moviemaking in general. These movies are "Robots", the recent animation film, "Hero", the groundbreaking martial arts movie from China, and "Star wars: Revenge of the Sith", the conclusion of the epic Star wars saga (unless rumors of another three movies are true). I will review Hero and Star wars soon in separate threads.

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Robots:
The first movie I noticed this script sensitivity in. My expectations were matching of my previous experiences of animation films of this kind such as Monsters inc., Ice age, The incredibles, Bug life, and others- meaning a high-quality themed movie, with smart twists, theme-based jokes, and plenty of humor. When I was putting the DVD into the player before watching it, I was thinking "it can't be bad, and it might be excellent. It will certainly have at least a few good jokes".
I wasn't completely off the mark, but the film did fail my expectations. Some of the humor, particularly Robin Williams' talented preformance, was what I expected. However, the good jokes were few and far between. I found the script to be lifeless. I found many of the dramatic lines to be bland and emotionless, sometimes being very cliche and plain. As I watched the movie, I thought to myself "this is an excellent example of bland screenwriting". It is not so much that the script was bad, but the words mentioned were too expository, too revealing, and too plain.
Besudes that, the movie was not bad, and the sights and innovations did not fail to show themselves. A better script would make this movie another winner. However, the script, in my eyes, was lacking.
A few lessons to be learned:
1) Dialogue should not be used purely to tell the viewer what to think, feel and to state emotions. Actions can express these better than words, and the stated emotion often causes the viewer to feel estranged from this emotion. "I feel so sad right now" does not cause sadness in the viewer, but showing a character throw aside the medal she fought so hard to win...that is much more powerful.
2) Evil and good. In many places, there is room for complete evil. For example, in the Lord of the rings trilogy, Sauron is ultimately evil and, one could say, one-sidedly so. However, evil must have something behind it; a character cannot be defined as "evil" and no more. The character of the corporate robot's mother is simply evil. She looks evil, sounds evil and is incarnately evil. However, when she acts, there is virtually no other dimension to her evil; she is what I call a "cackling" character, that is a character which loves bing evil and loves to spread evil for its own purpose- to be avoided if one does not know how to deal with such characters. Evil characters do not have to be grey and have good dimensions to them by any means, but they should have well defined motives and should not be spreading evil for its own purpose- unless we are dealing with grapple with philosophical evil, which was not the case in this movie.
3) Meaningful characters. The sidekick characters in this movie, Fender's friends, seemed to me to be almost completely disconnected from the movie. At the end they helped in the ultimate battle, but apart from that they were almost nonexistent. Characters should contribute more to the story and interaction, and if they do not fulfill a purpose they should not be in the movie.

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