"The Clone Wars": Less Intrigue, More Shooting

By Martha Brockenbrough
MSN Cinemama

The last three "Star Wars" movies were a huge letdown for many fans of the original trilogy.

All those people sleeping on sidewalks, wearing itchy Darth Maul greasepaint and paying way too much money for double-headed light sabers ... what did they get for their efforts? Only proof that "political intrigue" is an oxymoron.

The new "Star Wars" movie, an animated affair, goes too far in the other direction. Set before Anakin Skywalker goes to the dark side, but after he gets his wicked facial scar, "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" is 98 minutes of zinging laser beams with intermittent interruptions of dialogue and narration to explain the movie's curling plot, which involves a kidnapping, a Jedi trainee, and "control over the war in the outer rim." (Please, no filthy rim jokes. This is a family Web site.)

You could ask who this movie is for.

The people who showed up for a screening in full Star Wars character costume?

The little boy who sat next to me and nearly had a heart attack during the "Harry Potter" preview? ("Why would they show that to LITTLE CHILDREN?" he asked.)

Or for the men behind me discussing the best way to organize a list of prime numbers using Microsoft Word so that they could print them all using the least amount of paper?

The answer could very well be none of the above. The movie feels like an extended ad for the upcoming TV cartoon, which it is. It even feels like it belongs on television, where episodes without great story arcs or sweeping resolutions make sense.

That doesn't mean it won't have fans, though.

People who play a lot of "Halo" will think it's swell -- it feels a lot like watching someone else playing a video game. People who are "Star Wars" zealots will like it, because the ones left (particularly the ones who are willing to shave their heads and paint their flesh "corpse" for a screening) apparently like everything. Executive producer George Lucas is a lucky man.

People with small children, particularly those terrified by a mere "Harry Potter" preview, will not love it, though.

It's not that it's scary. It's rated PG, and the violence, while unending, is tame, though there is sexy alien dancing and a brief hookah scene. Considering all the shots that were fired, everyone on the outer rim appears to have really bad aim. A few droids do get their noggins blown off, and a handful of bounty hunters' heads are brought before Jabba the Hutt on what appears to be a canvas stretcher.

No, the bad part for kids about this movie is that the plot is really convoluted and the story jumps from setting to setting in a way that's not always easy to follow. It makes sense to give your kids a summary before you go, to avoid the dreaded "what's happening?" questions.

The gist: Jabba the Hutt is a big, fat, sluglike creature who controls shipping routes that are important to both the Jedis and their enemies. Someone kidnaps Jabba's son. The evil Count Dooku blames it on the Jedis, who spend the rest of the movie trying to bring the baby slug home to his dad. Meanwhile, Anakin Skywalker gets a sassy trainee who looks a lot like that "Tutenstein" cartoon (she's not quite dead yet, though).

What's in It for Kids

Kids know "Star Wars" is cool. Otherwise, why would Daddy get so red in the face when they touched his vintage action figures?

So they will want to like "Clone Wars," which is directed by Dave Filoni, who'll be a supervising director on the upcoming TV series on the Cartoon Network. Kids will have to work so hard to follow along they might just give up and watch the laser bullets fly back and forth, which would be perfectly understandable.

They will, however, find the stupid-robot jokes funny, especially when a couple of hapless clones fall off a cliff.

They might even like the new "girl power" character Ahsoka Tano, whom Yoda assigned to be Anakin's Padawan. Ahsoka is really good with a light saber, and she is able to knock down walls with a wave of her hands. This is almost enough to excuse her dialogue, which is straight from the annoying sitcom-banter file cabinet (see S: for "sassy").

Her nickname for Anakin? "Sky Guy." She calls Jabba's baby "Stinky." It's as if she's channeling the nicknamer-in-chief, George Bush. By comparison, Princess Leia's cinnamon-roll buns were dignified.

What's in It for Parents

On the bright side, the waxy looking characters in this movie are at least as lifelike as the live-action characters in the last three "Star Wars" movies. Though they're generally not voiced by the same actors as the movie (notable exceptions are C-3PO's Anthony Daniels, Christopher Lee as the unfortunately named Dooku, and Samuel L. Jackson as Mace Windu), the performances are no worse than what we've already endured.

The dialogue isn't great, though. Can you imagine being in a laser dogfight and finding time for sarcastic responses? It makes for a strange tone on the big screen.

The animation style -- rendered to look 3-D -- is a good reminder that fancier artwork styles don't equal good characterization.

Compared with "The Incredibles," which features an eerily similar globe-shaped enemy robot, the visual style of "The Clone Wars" feels clunky. The characters don't seem to have any weight to them. They glide along with their perfect space-hero posture, and not a one of them really comes to life, with the possible exception of Jabba the Hutt's uncle Ziro, who is a cross between Truman Capote and Uncle Arthur on "Bewitched."

If you have a kid who's really into "Star Wars," this movie isn't any worse -- and in some ways is more entertaining -- than the live-action trilogy that preceded it. Otherwise, a better bet might be the TV show, which is a better forum for incremental stories with corny jokes and shoot-'em-up action.

Martha Brockenbrough is MSN's Cinemama, for the Parents' Movie Guide. She is also the author of "It Could Happen to You: Diary of a Pregnancy and Beyond." She's also founder of SPOGG, the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar. She writes a fun-with-kids column for Cranium.com, as well as an educational humor column for Encarta. Check out her Web site.

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