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Review by Jedi_Kyp_Durron

It was what I expected. Animated Star Wars with little of plot. But hey, the acting was better than in Episodes I-III

So the plot is as follows, and remember to gaze away if you don’t want to know anything about the plot; Jabba the Hutt’s son, yeah he had offspring , has been kidnapped by the Separatist army. Anakin and his new Padawan Ahsoka Tano must rescue the cute slimeball and bring him back to Jabba.

Count Dooku on the other hand tries to turn Jabba against the rescuers, who he accuses to be behind the whole kidnap thing. Count Dooku and his master Sidious are, after all , after the trade routes controlled by the Hutt Clan.

The movie looks good and sounds great. Kevin Kiner is no John Williams, but the score worked for this animated movie, which was pretty fast paced. At least I didn’t need to hear recycled songs from the prequel trilogy.

But hey, it was all good. Good kiddie flick. The children. The children in my theater seemed to love it, and wouldn’t shut up, when they had to explain anything ‘neat’ that happened on screen.

I give this animated Star Wars ‘movie’:

B -

SecondView by Paul Talon

The hype had it as too kiddie. A mess that was on par only with the Phantom Menace and barely above the Ewoks cartoon of the eighties. Something not worth our time as a film. I’m happy to say…don’t believe the hype…or rather, believe the hype a bit to make certain you have your expectations properly tuned.

First off the kiddie accusations. In bits it certainly is more kiddie, but in honesty…how could anyone have any reasonable expectation otherwise? It’s the tentpole of a cartoon series at least overtly to the Saturday Morning Crowd…This isn’t the PG13 Revenge of the Sith, this is unabashedly for the younger crowd. My reaction? So what? As long as you aren’t expecting much more, The Clone Wars is a fun flick and if the cartoon series is like this, it should expect a decent run.

That’s not to say the film is above reproach, it certainly isn’t. My first criticism is the score. Barely dipping into the John Williams rich catalogue was a daring choice. I understand trying to differentiate because being Williams is impossible, but it took it out of the Star Wars universe a bit at times, where a more Williams quoted piece would have perhaps married it more to the films. Yes they chose to turn away a bit, but I think this was a mistake.

You can also certainly tell that this was going to be broken up into a few episodes as about every 22 minutes or so, you cold almost tell where the break would have been and it made some characters seem almost superfluous. What would have been a significant part in an episode would have been turns into an almost cameo appearances in the film for characters like Yoda, Mace Windu, and Padme.

And that leads to another negative. The whole Padme subplot seemed kind of forced and a way simply to shoehorn her into the film and perhaps extend the episodes into a film. But it’s not completely horrible.

But the good definitely make the film a worthwhile experience. The animation is spectacular. At times it worked seamlessly with what we saw in the films. (and I’m not knocking prequels as looking cartoony…so save it) And the characters were depicted in a unique style, a definite homage to the 60’s marionette styles that Lucas was going after. It made the characters stand out just a bit from the screen, and it worked well.

The vocal actors were phenomenal. Besides the returning trio of Anthony Daniels, Samuel L Jackson, and Christopher Dooku, the replacements were good as well. Anakin was much more strong and in control than Hayden Christensen’s performance, while Obi-Wan was spot on perfect. I almost would believe that Ewan decided to reprise his role after all.

All in all it was a fun ride, and while not a movie aimed for adults or a classically “great” film, it is a definite fun ride, a definite worthwhile addition to the Star Wars Universe, and worth the price of admission…especially if you know what you are getting yourself into.

B