Suitable for a Galaxy Far, Far Away

Star Wars: The Clone Wars is less talk and a little more rock

Star Wars: The Clone Wars is less talk and a little more rock
The world may not need another Anakin Skywalker movie, especially one that looks as if it8217;s not quite a cartoon, not quite a Christmas special and not quite something panoramically painted on the side of a van. But there8217;s always room for another stoner movie, and Lucasfilm and Warner Bros. might want to market Star Wars: The Clone Wars as such, in a summer of stoner movies.
People attuned to the Clone Wars need to be high on something8212;high on being a lifelong devotee of Star Wars, or at least high on the hope that it is salvageable. Sadly, this one shucks off all remaining pretense of universal appeal, and instead unfolds with all the majesty and emptiness of watching someone play a video game.

It8217;s unsettling to begin with the Warner Bros. logo instead of Twentieth Century Fox8217;s fanfare logo, but hey, it8217;s a bottom-line galaxy, after all, in which George Lucas has directed his minions among them director Dave Filoni to march forth and make money however possible. Although Filoni8217;s animators pull off lovely but fleeting moments of inventive style and rich colours, we are right back in the fog of war from the first frame. It8217;s like having to retake a multiple-choice test in a history class you flunked: the Sith, the Jedi council, the chancellor, the separatists, the Old Republic, the senate, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the Trade Federation. The what? The hunh?

Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker the celebrity voices are impersonated are in the midst of the great and pointless Clone Wars, which take place between the live-action Star Wars movies that came out in 2002 and 2005. The war was rigged by the evil Chancellor Palpatine as a distraction so that he could finally declare himself Galactic Emperor.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars is less talk and a little more rock. It doesn8217;t even bother with the helpful three paragraphs of space-crawl exposition that opened the live-action films. We get right to the battles that all transpire on a Mixed-Use Planet Condo, or on Planet Phallic Symbol. You never saw so many sex toyesque shapes, mountains, buildings and objects in the background of a sci-fi movie, which is saying something.
Yoda has ordered our heroes, accompanied by their inappropriately dressed teenage Jedi intern, Ahsoka, to help rescue the kidnapped son of Jabba the Hutt. The bad guys have kidnapped Jabba Jr., but are trying to make mafia-man Jabba Sr. believe that the kidnapping is part of a Jedi plot. That way, see, the Hutt clan will restrict the hyperspace traffic lanes that cross their territory and 8230; well, anyhow, Anakin needs to find that baby.

Meanwhile, there8217;s a Clone War to fight. Most children will be bored senseless by it, but likely hypnotised by all the colours and guns. Most casual fans have sensed this movie for what it is: a toy catalogue for grown-up collectors. Near the end, the mystery of who really kidnapped Baby the Hutt leads to a nightclub owned by his uncle, Truman Capote the Hutt. It8217;s a sad day for Star Wars when the most inspired thing in the galaxy is a lazy gay stereotype.
-Hank Stuever, LATWP