Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Critic Reviews

George Lucas is turning into the enemy of fun.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars comes as something of a surprise: it isn't the most painful movie of the year!

The sheer, brain-frazzling pointlessness of it all predominates. Why? Why do this again? At 64, Lucas is surely not too old to have a crack at creating a movie that has nothing to do with Star Wars at all.

The story lacks narrative tension. The dialogue is stilted and overblown, a problem also in some of the live-action incarnations. That, combined with visuals that consistently lack punch, leaves little to engage us.

This one shucks off all pretense that Star Wars has a wonderfully universal appeal and instead unfolds with all the entertainment value of watching somebody else play a video game.

The latest example of how the franchise keeps frustratingly spurning the magical simplicity of the original trilogy.

If this were a true Star Wars film, right about now somebody would say, '... I've got a bad feeling about this.'

Visually busy and visually forgettable, with a less than engaging story line, and characters who look like anime figures and move like the denizens of Geppetto's workshop, Wars will appeal only to the most tolerant, galactically minded children.

It moves fast, conquers armies, kicks into hyperspace and spits out idiotic quips with unapologetic cartoon brio.

Has it come to this? Has the magical impact of George Lucas' original vision of Star Wars been reduced to the level of Saturday morning animation?

Clone Wars was executive-produced by George Lucas, who may be feeling a tad sheepish about the results.

Without the grandiose narrative structure of the six live-action releases, this feels even more pointless, a mechanical attempt to milk the kids for every last dime.

The best that can be said about the movie is that it's harmless and mostly charmless. The Clone Wars is to Star Wars what karaoke is to pop music.

George, if this is the best you can do, please give us Star Wars: The Final Tie-In soon.

The saddest attempt yet to capitalize on the success of George Lucas' original sci-fi epic.

If you're willing to regress to the mental age of 12 for a couple of hours, it's an amusing ride.

This isn't the Star Wars we've always known and at least sometimes loved.

The females all look like they've had work done. Who knew that to make it in the movies, even cartoon characters have to have plastic surgeons!

Actually better than expected.

Pretty much drives a stake into the heart of every loyal fan of the movies. And now he's out to stick it to those too young to know about Jar Jar Binks.

A noisy, hectic and largely unthrilling adventure.

The movie gets more cluttered and confused as it moves along, though it's dotted with so many generic battle scenes and paint-by-numbers light-saber combat sequences that you can see how it's at least attempting to mimic the illusion of excitement.

Anakin's a real mannequin in this stiffly-executed CG feature.

Reasonably fun if generally forgettable.