Review: 'Star Wars The Clone Wars' movie is sometimes a fun cartoon

Star Wars: The Clone Wars    PG  

            This is not your father's Star Wars. The Star Wars universe goes back to the 'clone wars well' with this ambitious animated big screen version of the Cartoon Network show, only it's a retcon. In the story, Count Dokuu hatches an evil plot to kidnap a slugling, the son of Jabba the Hut, to make it look like the Jedi are behind it, and it's up to Obi Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker, and their new orange but white haired, dreadlock wearing teenage sidekick to stop the plot. This evil witchy Sith lady shows up also, and there are clones, lots of them, including the amusingly named Commander Cody. Amidala, Artoo and Threepio also appear, and strangely enough, an asexual sluglike tattooed "uncle" of Jaba, who appears to be a cross between Truman Capote (from the lesser 'Infamous' not from the better, 'Capote'), and a talking neon tatooed lava lamp. The characters are animated like someone was trying to imitate Airbender, (the animators who did the first Clone Wars indeed borrowed some Airbender animators), but here it's just a very stiff, unnatural looking CGI thing. What it does well at are 'snap bang' video game battles, as anyone under 25 who likes the remakes better than the original Star Wars will probably buy and watch it over and over on DVD. As for those of us over 30, we know better, but it's not a horrible movie. If it is meant to launch a new cartoon, it's fine, but I have no idea if it will last even a season, and they should drop the live action idea right now. It just won't work. They're going to beat the clone wars dead horse with this toon. No reason to beat the fans again with live action. Unless they scrap it and make one set in another time without need of the canon of clones and the evil empire. Lucas, just drop all this stuff and let the guys that wrote good scifi do Episode 7, 8, and 9! Please! You can produce. Just don't write or direct. He didn't direct this cartoon! (Nor did he direct Episodes V and VI). The critics are on dope because this movie was given poor ratings just about everywhere so far, it it's clearly better than that, at an average one, which makes it worth a rental. 
Review by Adam Browne