The Clone Wars

Review by Jason Donner

Some people, after reading my reviews of the Star Wars prequels at least, have often accused me of liking something if the words "Star Wars" are slapped on them and, truthfully, I've often wondered the same thing. With the release of The Clone Wars, I can definitely say that this is not the case. This ugly and empty-headed cartoon is the first Star Wars movie I have not enjoyed immensely. I would even go so far to say that The Clone Wars embodied much of what has gone wrong with Star Wars since 1998.

First, a little background. As you can probably guess, this movie takes place during The Clone Wars in the space between Episode II and III. Anakin and Obi-Wan are fighting droids left and right when the movie begins and are soon joined by a prepubescent brat named Ahsoka who is to be Skywalker's Padiwan Learner.

Ahsucka is supposed to represent a brave and strong female character, but she's overdone to the point that within five minutes of meeting this twit, I was yearning for her to be bisected by a light saber.

From a rather grating introduction of a new character and a somewhat dull battle scene, the plot of the movie finally arrives after about half an hour (hey, that's about the time it takes for a TV episode, isn't it?) and Skywalker and Ahsucka have to go rescue Jabba the Hutt's son from Count Dooku and his separatists.

Holy poodoo! This is an ugly movie with ugly characters in it. The Genndy Tartakovsky style of animation looks great in 2-D, but the translation of it into a three dimensional medium looks weird and blocky as if every single character was sculpted badly out of rubber and feces.

It doesn't help that the voice acting in this movie is dreadful as well. If you thought Hayden Christianson was a bad Anakin, you ought to get a load of the robot they have voicing the character now. It doesn't stop there either... Obi-Wan, Padme, and all the incidental characters sound awful. One of them, Jabba's uncle, sounds like Truman Capote; I am not kidding you!

What I don't understand is that Anthony Daniels came back and, more amazingly, Christopher Lee returned to supply Count Dooku with a voice. What the hell? Chris Lee returns but somehow Hayden was too busy sitting at home, playing Xbox and waiting for that Jumper sequel?

The worst thing of all is that this movie is for kids. I remember my words well from almost ten years ago that all the Star Wars movies are for kids, but The Clone Wars is for retarded kids. The dialogue is just hideous, characterization is all over the place, and the situations are oversimplified and stupid to the point of inanity.

I'm no fool. I know that this was basically three episodes of the animated series precycled into a big screen movie to get some quick cash, but for goodness sakes, they could at least have upped the quality a little before releasing this turd. Get the original actors back, tweak the script, something! This could have been Star Wars' Mask of the Phantasm, but as it is... it's more like Star Wars' The Care Bear Movie.

I do have to say that this movie is not completely worthless and is entertaining to a point. When the TV show premieres, I will probably watch it, but turning a TV series into a movie with no increase in quality is simply an inexcusable cash grab and makes me deeply wonder just how Lucas feels about his devoted fans after all this time.

What's the matter, George, did you need a yacht this month or something?