Star Wars: The Clone Wars

I love animated movies. I wish more adult themed animated movies would hit the big screen. On the contrary, children's animated movies are still incredibly watchable. Star Wars: The Clone Wars is a must see for any Star Wars fan. Even so, I was a little apprehensive about stepping in the movie theater. But reassuringly there were a few other guys about 15 to 20 years older than me, by themselves, in the audience.

The plot time line of The Clone Wars is somewhere in between Star Wars: Episode II- Attack of the Clones and Star Wars: Episode III- Revenge of the Sith. The story is mostly simple unlike the Star Wars prequel trilogy. Jabba the Hutt's son has been kidnapped and he offers a reward to whoever brings his child back alive. Anakin and his new apprentice sort out this mess during the war.

What I liked about this movie was that it understood what it wanted to accomplish. It set out to be a stunning adventure movie in the Star Wars universe and it delivered. The action in the battles was riveting. It produced a similar sensation to playing through a white knuckle shooter on a video game console. The art style of the characters took about five minutes to warm up to, but overall the visual content of the film was excellent. The tale of The Clone Wars was not too deep. The action seemed to be the main focus, but a movie fails without a decent story. So I guess the story was adequate. The action was surprisingly original for a Star Wars movie. One disappointment I had was that the movie didn't even hint at Anakin's flirtations with the dark side. But it would have been out of place with the rest of the film. Also some of the dialogue was phoned in and lame. It would have helped if the movie were a bit more serious too. But those few points aside, I was glad I saw The Clone Wars.

I give Star Wars: The Clone Wars 8 VIP passes out of 10.

Victor Penro