Star Wars Clone Wars The Film

Reviews

The Force has left the edifice

Obi-Wan Kenobi (James Arnold Taylor) prepares for battle in "Star Wars: The Clone Wars," the outset feature-length animated "Star Wars" moving picture.

Has it come to this? Has the magical impact of George Lucas' original vision of "Star Wars" been reduced to the level of Saturday morning blitheness? "Star Wars: The Clone Wars," which is a continuation of an earlier animated TV series, is basically just a 98-minute trailer for the autumn launch of a new series on the Cartoon Network.

The familiar "Star Wars" logo and the pulse-pounding John Williams score now elevator the pall on a slow film that cuts corners on its animation and slumbers through a plot that (a) makes united states of america feel like we've seen information technology all before, and (b) makes united states of america wish we hadn't.

The action accept place betwixt the events in the "real" movies "Episode Two: Attack of the Clones" and "Episode III: Revenge of the Sith." The Democracy is still at war with the Separatists, its admission to the Galactic Rim is threatened and much depends on pleasing the odious Jabba the Hutt, whose child had been kidnapped -- past the Jedi, he is told.

It's up to Anakin Skywalker and his new Padawan pupil, Ahsoka Tano, to find the infant, while Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda lead the resistance to a Separatist onslaught. And if all of this means lilliputian to you lot, y'all might as well terminate reading now. It won't get any better.

This is the first characteristic-length animated "Star Wars" motion picture, but instead of pushing the state of the art, information technology'southward retro. You'd think the great animated films of recent years had never been made. The characters accept hair that looks molded from Play-Doh, bodies that seem arthritic, and moving lips on one-half-frozen faces -- all signs that shortcuts were taken in the animation work.

The dialogue in the original "Star Wars" movies had a certain grace, but here the characters speak to one another in simplistic declamation, and Yoda gets particularly tiresome with his once-charming spoken communication pattern. To quote the famous line by Wolcott Gibbs, "Backward ran sentences until reeled the mind."

The battle scenes are interminable, specially once we realize that although the air is filled with bullets, shells and explosive rockets, no one we like is going to be killed. The ii armies attack each other, for some reason, only on a wide street in a towering city. Showtime one army advances, and then the other. Why not a more fluid battle program? To save money on backgrounds, I presume. The trick that Anakin and his Padawan learner apply to become behind the enemy force field (essentially, they hide under a box) wouldn't fifty-fifty have fooled everyone in a Hopalong Cassidy movie -- peculiarly when they stand up and run with their legs visible, but can't run into where they're going.

Ahsoka Tano, by the way, is annoying. She bats her grapefruit-sized eyes at Anakin and offers suggestions that invariably testify her right and her teacher wrong. At least when we showtime met Yoda, he was offering useful advice. Which reminds me. I'm probably wrong, only I don't think anyone in this movie e'er refers to The Force.

You know you're in problem when the most interesting new character is Jabba the Hutt'south uncle. The big revelation is that Jabba has an infant to be kidnapped. The big discovery is that Hutts look like that when built-in, merely smaller. The question is, who is Jabba's married woman? The puzzle is, how exercise Hutts copulate? Like snails, I speculate. If you don't know how snails do it, allow'due south non even go in that location. The final thing this movie needs is a Jabba the Hutt sex scene.