Skip to content
Dom Robinson reviews
Odeon, Trafford Centre
DVD: 
Blu-Ray:
- Cert:
- Running time: 95 minutes
- Year: 2008
- Released: 15th August 2008
- Widescreen Ratio: 2.35:1
- Rating: 7/10
Director:
- Dave Filoni
(Star Wars: The Clone Wars, TV: Avatar: The Last Airbender, Star Wars: The Clone Wars)
Producers:
- George Lucas and Catherine Winder
Screenplay:
- Henry Gilroy, Steven Melching and Scott Murphy
Original Score :
- Kevin Kiner
Cast :
- Anakin Skywalker: Matt Lander
Ahsoka Tano: Ashley Eckstein
Obi-Wan Kenobi: James Arnold Taylor
Captain Rex/Cody/Clone Trooper: Dee Bradley Baker
Yoda/Narrator/Admiral Yularen: Tom Kane
Asajj Ventress/Tee-C-Seventy: Nika Futterman
Chancellor Palpatine/Darth Sidious: Ian Abercrombie
General Loathsom/Ziro the Hutt/Kronos-327: Corey Burton
Padmé Amidala: Catherine Taber
Jabba the Hutt: Kevin Michael Richardson
Mace Windu: Samuel L Jackson
C-3PO: Anthony Daniels
Count Dooku: Christopher Lee
Slotting in between Episodes 2 and 3, Star Wars: The Clone Warstakes the characters of Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi on a simple mission.
Well, it’s simple in terms of plot structure even if the task from start to finish is fairly difficult for them. And if youlet it, it can be difficult for the viewer if you want to hang on every last word of the plot. That’s because, like a lot ofthe Star Wars films, the only plot exposition they have is about warring factions and brokering treaties and other thingsthat sound like you’ve put on an episode of Question Time instead. However, as long as you recognise who’s the goodguys and who’s the bad guys and that good has to triumph over evil by the time the end credits roll, while ignoring all thewaffle, then you’ll stand yourself in good stead.
The basic plot is that, after dealing with the first big fight where the bad guys try to invade the town of the good guysby going in with a huge shield that covers every surface within a big enough radius – a shield that is quite easily deal withby the good guys, the news comes through that Jabba the Hut’s son has been kidnapped and both Anakin (Matt Lanter) andnew female Padawan learner, Ahsoka Tano (Ashley Eckstein), have to go and find him and bring him back to daddy. There’ssome good banter between these two as he refers to her as ‘Snips’, her to him and ‘Sky Boy’ and both of them to the smellygreen blob they’ve had to locate as ‘Stinky’.
So, why would the good guys help Jabba? Because this means it will keep profitable trade routes open… and, yes, we’re backto tedious plot info again. Still, on the plus side, while this doesn’t have Han Solo, Boba Fett and other classic charactersin it, it does have a new good one in the form of Ahsoka, and a new baddie in Asajj Ventress (Nika Futterman) who worksunder Count Dooku (Christopher Lee).
Star Wars: The Clone Wars has a thread-bare plot (there’s a slight bit more to the rescuing of Jabba’s son, but not alot so I’ll leave you to find that out), some of the slow bits do drag at times, but then 70% of it is pure crash/bang/wallop.
As such, this film felt like a series of CGI cut scenes from a computer game stitched together and put up on a big screen, and it lookedfantastic for that. Camera angles go as wild as you’d expect and characters grimace into the camera like Dirk the Daring fromDragon’s Lair as the baddies square up against them. I went to see this film expecting a great piece of entertainmentfor 90 minutes and that’s what I got. It didn’t matter that the two main characters weren’t voiced by the real actors from thefilms – although it would’ve been nice, and it was a bonus that we had the original voices of C3PO, Mace Windu and CountDooku thrown into the mix.
It also made me realise that, as many films are made out of computer game series – and that almost all of them are total crap,they’d improve a lot more if they went the route of Clone Wars and made a CGI movie. That way, you could get all of theaction up on the big screen and if you can find hold it together with a decent plot then that’d be welcome, even if it’s notentirely necessary.
There’s a good deal of brief comedic moments as well, all of which are entirely daft but which made me laugh a lot, mostlycoming with one-liners between the enemy droids as they exhibit human traits, such as when one notices the forthcoming onslaughtby Anakin and co. as they climb a mountain towards them, and tells his underling to “Fire at grid location 1114467” (orsomething similar), to which he replies, “Er… 11..4… what was that again?”, and the first one sighs, then points andshouts, “Down there!”
What was surprising was that for a Star Wars film, from the first week out it was only showing in one screen in this multiplexand in its second week there wasn’t a massive audience for it, which was rather a shame as it certainly deserved more of a big-screenturnout than the average dumb Adam Sandler or Will Ferrell flick.
Put simply, if you like the Star Wars films and you want to see something very undemanding, and a bit different as it’s a CGI-onlysci-fi movie, then this is a great way of spending an hour and a half.
Note that this is also the first entry prior to a new animated TV series, coming later this year.
Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2008.
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.