Review of Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) by Adam F — 06 Feb 2013

"Star Wars: The Clone Wars" feels like the pilot for a TV show, isn't particularly well animated, well written or exciting and only the youngest of children will find it enjoyable. It isn't that the style of animation is bad, it's that the movie just feel so empty.

Background elements look and feel flat, designs seem uninspired and look like they were designed to be easily animated more than to enrich the world the movie is set in and some basic elements look lazy, like footprints in the sand that look like the graphics from a video game from the early 2000's.

Other elements on the characters themselves like clothing and hair feel static and lack definition, making them look like plastic pieces glued onto their faces or making characters dressed in cloaks look like ghosts instead of people wearing simple clothing.

The characters are dull and are either introduced so quickly you will be confused as to whether or not you're supposed to know who these people are or they are new (such as Asajj Ventress, who appears suddenly and is referred to by all of the Jedi but is never properly introduced to us) or they're characters we've seen before and know will easily overcome the legions of dumb robots.

The humor is bad, being focused mostly on the incompetent droids panicking at the sight of Jedi (and can someone explain why robots that are designed mainly for shooting things have the ability to experience fear?) or around Ahsoka spouting jokes at Anakin's expense.

The action never really takes advantage of the animated format and is often quite dull, though it does try to be impactful by showing plenty of characters get killed (no characters we know or care about mind you).

The dialogue is stilted and the voice acting is bad, the villains aren't interesting and some characters are even inconsistent from their appearances in other films (since when does Jabba the Hut, the disgusting, cruel gangster have a son, an adorable baby slug that burps and gets into all sorts of hijinks?).

It often feels like characters or elements were thrown into the movie so that there would be visual cues to remind you of the better stories set in the same universe. Compared to the earlier released 2D animated "Clone Wars" series, this is a dull experience.

There's no reason to see this unless you're VERY young and are just dying to see more "Star Wars" material. (Dvd, February 5, 2013).