Star Wars: Clone Wars

Director: Dave Filoni
Screenwriters: Henry Gilroy, George Lucas
Starring: Matt Lanter, Ashley Eckstein, Christopher Lee, James Arnold Taylor
Running time: 98 mins
Certificate: PG

File this film under the category 'For Fans Only'. George Lucas's animated adventure fills in key gaps in the Star Wars mythology and contains an array of impressive visuals, but its repetitive nature, lack of interesting dialogue and bland characterisation quickly cause the attention span to crumble.

Taking place between Attack Of The Clones and Revenge Of The Sith, the muddled narrative charts the attempts of Anakin Skywalker and young trainee Jedi Ahsoka Tano to find the kidnapped son of Jabba the Hut. The backdrop to their mission is the fierce Clone Wars, which involves Obi Wan Kenobi pairing up with Yoda to repel the dark forces.

Initially, the anime style animation is impressive and enables us to see a variety of breathtakingly imaginative landscapes and creatures on a wonderful scale. The accentuated angular features of certain characters also works well, with Count Dooku's crooked features emphasising his sinister nature well alongside Christopher Lee's marvellous delivery.

Yet, as was the case with the recent Star Wars films, the seemingly endless barrage of eye candy soon loses its novelty and the absence of a gripping plot is exposed. The storyline is simply too threadbare for the most part, despite a couple of intriguing twists, and is never allowed to gain any momentum by a procession of overlong and noisy battle sequences.

It's disappointing that Hayden Christensen and Ewan McGregor haven't lent their vocals to Anakin and Obi Wan, but it's doubtful whether their dulcet tones could do anything with the mundane dialogue. Fairing better is Ashley Eckstein as Ahsoka, who embodies the young fighter with an appealing effervescent attitude and spirit.

Although verbal attempts at humour fall flat, there is a smattering of crowd-pleasing visual gags. Most noticeably, Jabba's offspring is hilarious, repulsive and cute at the same time and a pure pleasure to behold.

Ultimately, there simply wasn't enough narrative development to justify a feature length film. More a case of Clone Bores, this project would work far better if divided up into more digestible shorter chunks for the television. Indeed, this is the fate that shall befall future instalments of the Clone Wars in a television series that follows on from this mediocre film.


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