Essentially an extended trailer for the 2008 Cartoon Network animated series, STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS takes place between the fifth and sixth live-action STAR WARS films and chronicles the adventures of Anakin Skywalker during the early years of the war between the empire and the rebels.
Jedi warrior Anakin the bland Matt Lanter) and Obi-Wan Kenobi (James Arnold Taylor) are in the thick of battle with rebel forces when they receive word that Rotta (David Acord), the much-loved son of Jabba the Hutt (Kevin Michael Richardson) has been kidnapped. The Jedi council hopes that an alliance with Hutt clan will aid their cause and dispatch Obi-Wan, Anakin and Anakin's insolent new padawan, Ahsoka Tano (Ashley Eckstein), to rescue the malodorous Hutlett. But it soon becomes apparent that the creature's abduction is part of a larger plan by villainous Count Dooku (Christopher Lee) and his elegant assassin, Asajj Ventress (Nika Futterman), to undermine the fragile truce between the Hutts -- who control a number of strategically-important shipping lanes at the outer reaches of the empire -- and the Jedi.
The highly stylized look of CLONE WARS is explicitly modeled on the Sylvia and Gerry Adams sci-fi marionette series Thunderbirds, a fact that will no doubt be lost on the ten year olds who are the film's target audience: Their parents weren't born when Thunderbirds first aired. Bu the film's real drawback for adult STAR WARS fans is its relentless dullness coupled with the fact that Ahsoka, hailed as a new generation of can-do Lucasian heroine, spends the bulk of the film schlepping a baby and trading toothless double entendres with Anakin. Carrie Fisher's Princess Leia is Gloria Steinem by comparison. leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
