Star Wars: The Clone Wars Review (Potential Spoilers)

Ugh.

That about sums it up. First off, it shouldn't have been called "The Clone Wars," because that indicates a vast epic - it should have been called "The Hutt Incident" and been a 30 minute cartoon.

The worst part? The animation. The models and rendering were nice, but the animators apparently have never seen a real human (or alien) talk, walk, run, jump or use a weapon. The characters' faces were expressionless, and their lips never seemed to match the words correctly. It was just like a video game cut scene, or a foreign movie, where you just get used to the fact the words and mouths aren't going to be in harmony. The director had no sense of comedic timing and even the lines played for yuks (basically all the droid soldier scenes) and head-slapping bad.

Coming a close second in mediocrity was the dialogue. My three year old enjoyed the movie, perhaps because it was written at his dialogue level, and delivered with the enthusiasm of an actor sitting nonchalantly in a pleasant, gray, foam-lined sound booth. The voice of the new padawan character, a young girl, was annoying in a "Mickey Mouse Club" kind of way.

Like repetition? Well, you get to see the same light-saber-reflecting shots 85 times, using the force to retrieve a light saber or push an enemy 94 times, stylishly slicing through 'droids 248 times... and it's all animated so poorly, and the suspense so non-existent, that you'll never care.

 

Someone wrote a great article on Kasdan and Irvin Kirscher (sp?) being what held up the first two, and that Lucas should not have tried controlling (ruining) the "new" three episodes.

I forgot in my previous post to mention the crappy soundtrack. First off, THEY CHANGED THE $*#&^@ THEME SONG. Yes, the venerable 31 year old Star Wars theme gets bastardized by changing the rhythm and cadence, and new orchestration. I got seriously angry right when the title screen appeared. Then, the traditional scrolling titles was replaced by a "newscast" style review of the Star Wars story replete with super-cheesy annOUNcer guy (think 50's comic cartoon). The music in the movie actually uses rock kit (electric guitars, etc), and plenty of poorly done Middle Eastern melodies for the desert scenes (think B-movie cut of Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerrard)