Review of Star Wars: The Clone Wars: The Motion Picture: Saving a Baby Hutt, for Some Reason

About a week and a half ago, the 'sband and I got around to watching Star Wars: The Clone Wars (The Movie). It wasn't, like, terrible. Neal has watched episodes of the Clone Wars TV show, and he said the movie was pretty much exactly the same, except longer. It seems like it would be pretty decent for something you'd watch on Cartoon Network, but I'm glad we didn't go see it in the theater.

The biggest negatives I'd read in reviews didn't seem that bad to me. I read that it was like watching somebody else play a video game--fight, cutscene, fight, cutscene--but I thought it gelled better than that. I'd also seen complaints about baby-Hutt slapstick (since Anakin and his Sassy Padawan have to rescue Jabba the Hutt's infant son for reasons that aren't entirely convincing), but there was barely any of that.

The dialogue is pretty stilted, even for Star Wars. It got less rather than more annoying as the movie went along, though. Also, the new Sith-ish villain they introduce is kind of lame. She has the two-lightsabers thing going on, but never used them to do two different things at once, which annoyed me (instead of blocking Obi-Wan's blade with both of yours, use one to block and the other to cut his legs off! COME ON!). She also couldn't manage to kill the 11-year-old Sassy Padawan with them, either. Weak. The thing I just couldn't stop noticing was the voice acting on Obi-Wan. Like I mentioned to Neal, it was like the voice actor gave very serious thought to the role: "What is the essence of Ewan McGregor's performance as Obi-Wan Kenobi?" he asked himself. "I've got it! Smugness. Pure, unadulterated smugness. I'm going to be awesome at this."

The biggest "Wait . . . what?" factor in the movie is definitely the gay Hutt. See, Jabba has this uncle, Ziro, who lives on Coruscant, making it convenient for Padme to go try to negotiate with him (side note: this happens about two thirds of the way through the movie, and until it did, I had completely forgotten that Padme existed. I didn't miss her when she wasn't there, apparently). You wouldn't think a being without feet could mince, but you'd be wrong. Displaying his customary level of cultural sensitivity, Lucas apparently watched scenes of this character--a craven, highly-strung, gaudily adorned nightclub owner, and decreed, "I want him to sound like Truman Capote." . . . It's weird, is what I'm trying to say.



So, as ever, the key is expectations. If you go into this with low expectations, expecting it to be more like a high-quality Saturday morning cartoon show than a big budget summer blockbuster, it's . . . fine.