Star Wars: The Clone Wars

Yes, the opening intro without JW's music or the crawl was a HUGE mistake. (The voice over did make me cringe..ugh!) Yes, the human characters looked freakin bizarre (Kenobi's beard looked like a wood carving) and they should have gone with a more realistic look instead of the pointless style they used.

And yes, the story was pretty childish for a feature film aimed at adults...But that's the thing. This is an opener for a TV cartoon. It was not intended to blend right into the live action franchise. My kids liked it just fine, and I was not offended at all by it. In fact the action scenes were quite impressive. We finally get to see enough clone/droid mayhem to make people complain that it's too much (meaning almost enough clone/droid mayhem for me:) You guys are like a bunch of spoiled kids. Luke, Han, & Co. are NEVER coming back! Some day someone will probably do a series of re-makes or spin-offs that will have a more serious tone, and I agree that the franchise really needs that. But it won't happen while George is at the wheel. So if your going to get suicidal every time George cranks out one of his Disney-phase projects...Just stay away from it. It's not worth the stress.

The traditional scrolling prologue is replaced by a transatlantic voice that would have been at home in a 1940's serial. From here, we are thrown into episode 2.5 of the Star Wars saga. This is pretty generic Saturday morning cartoon fare with wooden voice acting and two dimensional characters. The dynamic between Anakin Skywalker and his new sidekick, will grate on the nerves of anyone over the age of 8 years old. The stiff animation makes everyone come across as a cross between an action figure and a Thunderbird. For a theatrically released film there is nothing cinematic about it and feels like a feature length pilot for the animated series.

As a spin off from the Star Wars franchise, it's OK but purely for kids only.

I saw this movie yesterday at an early preview, and we took our two boys along with us. We found it to be a fun movie, full of action and more than able to keep our kids' attention. The movie itself jumps right into the Star Wars world without any sort of background information, so those who aren't familiar with Star Wars may be a bit lost at first (the movie takes place somewhere in between Episodes II and III). However, the action is immediate and the story moves along well. There were moments of humor with the battle droids, whose vocabulary has been greatly expanded. With a few exceptions, most of the major characters are obviously voiced by different people than in the original movies (though the actor voicing Obiwan was good--we thought it actually was Ewan McGregor), but overall the movie was enjoyable, especially for the younger set.

The action in this animated film takes place sometime after that depicted in 'Attack of the Clones'. The war between The Republic and Count Dooku's droid army is still raging and both sides want access to the space controlled by Jabba the Hutt. When Jabba's young son is kidnapped the Jedi decide their cause will be helped if they are the ones to rescue him. Obi-Wan and Anakin are to lead the mission; they will be accompanied by Ahsoka Tano, a Padawan apprentice who Yoda has entrusted to Anakin.

This may not be the greatest addition to the 'Star Wars' franchise but I thought it was rather fun. The action is solid from start to finish meaning one can easily overlook some of the film's flaws. With the exception of Ahsoka Tano there aren't many new characters. No time is wasted reintroducing old characters; it is clear that the makers expect the viewers to have seen the preceding films. Ahsoka is a fun addition to the cast; I liked how her relationship with Anakin developed throughout the film. There are some weak points; the character designs took a little getting used to and I could have done without the 'amusingly' incompetent droid army... of course it is easy to forget that a key part of the 'Star Wars' audience has always been the fairly young. The voice acting is impressive; some characters kept their voice actors from the live action prequels but most didn't and the new cast sound like the originals. Overall I thought this was a decent addition to the franchise although I suspect it will appeal most to younger fans.

Fan buzz has been very negative for this movie. Myself, I have tried to remain positive. But even I, as a very lenient movie watcher has to admit that this really wasn't great. It's not on par with any of the other six movies of the franchise. It wasn't all bad though, and I will tell you what was good and bad about it now.

The animation was a real mixed bag. It had great backgrounds that looked almost like they were taken right out of the movies, then you have these very poorly designed characters. As much as I liked most of the designs on everything but the characters themselves, I couldn't help looking at the animation like a beautiful painting with poo smeared in some spots. You can look at the painting, but it's hard to enjoy it when you can't take your eyes off the poo. It takes away from the potentially awesome animation. They look plastic and stiff, and the facial expressions and lip syncing look like something from a Playstation game from 1999. The voice acting was pretty bad as well, although Christopher Lee did and alright job, and Matt Lanter had a lot more emotion in his voice acting than Hayden had in the entire role.

The dialogue was about as bad as can be. The exchanges between Anakin and his apprentice were all cliché and boring. Not to mention almost all the droids were like copies of Jar Jar Binks. A main problem was that I thought this would focus more on action than it did. That's why I felt all that lame childish stuff wouldn't matter. But it was mostly discussing the problems and treaties and stuff, which was the last thing this movie needed. There was a fair bit of action, but even when they were having awesome lightsaber duals, they felt the need to stop every 4 seconds and talk about stuff that I didn't need to hear, such as why they were having the battle. I wanted to see lightsaber duals on a level that they couldn't manage in a live action movie, and they did not deliver in this way. A lot of the other action was pretty good though, some being very fast moving and intense.

The storyline really didn't consist of much.... just people trying to get Jabba the Hutt on their side, basically. This is not a movie that I think many old Star Wars fans will enjoy, but it may be a movie that helps introduce new people to the franchise, which is always a good thing. This is definitely a movie for the younger audiences, not older people and film critics. It basically just felt like a long TV Show episode, which is basically all it was. It was good for a TV episode, but not for a movie. If the action is as good in the series as it was in the movie (and hopefully there will be more), then I will be looking forward to it. But if they release another movie that looks to be at this level, I will have to wait until DVD.