Star Wars: The Clone Wars

There is a fine line between a movie that is made for children, and a childish movie. Realistically, the Star Wars movies are made for children. They are huge movies telling simple stories that are engaging and entertaining. They rollercoast along, delivering us a plot that is just complex enough to ensure that the story never loses focus, and has enough action and adventure to leave kids leaving the cinemas with wide eyes going..."wow...how cool was THAT?".
Star Wars: The Clone Wars is a childish movie. It's essentially a whole sequence of action sequences, interspersed with small cut scenes to remind us that the movie is about looking for Jabba The Hutt's son. In fact, when you describe it like that, you are suddenly struck by what this movie actually is like - it's like watching someone else playing a computer game. With the highly styalized computer animation, the comparison becomes even more obvious.

The dialogue is not particularly complex, but it is delivered in a very strange manner. Pauses are placed in positions that seem illogical and it feels a little like someone has edited the dialogue together from a variety of different sources. Surprisingly it is the traditional voice actors who suffer from this the worst. Samuel L Jackson, Christopher Lee and Anthony Daniels have no problem getting into the rhythm of their characters, but the voice actors who are used to performing in such a style are way off.

The majority of the new voices don't seem out of place - Matt Lanter doing a good job of Anakin and Catherine Taber coming across well as Padme, but James Arnold Taylor does a relatively good impression of Ewan McGregor, though fails to remember that McGregor was trying to do Alec Guiness, so Obi-Wan seems more and more distant from that original 1977 film. Equally Ian Abercrombie is not a good replacement for Ian McDiarmid as Palpatine. Standing out, though, is Ashley Drane as Ahsoka Tano, Skywalker's new padawan. She is lively and active and is the most convincing character in the movie (including Mace Windu and Dooku).

The worst thing about this movie, however, is the droid army which come across as not only incompetent but stupendously stupid. They argue and fight as they get slain by an army which is actually bothering to pay attention to the fight they are in. There isn't much point in creating villains if they are not going to actually be a threat.

Overall there is nothing terribly wonderful about this movie. It's bland and unexciting and nowhere near as good as the cartoon that spawned it five years ago. Do yourself a favour and go and watch those. They are infinitely better. Hopefully the television series that will spin off from this will be a vast improvement.

"C"