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In ‘Star Wars: The Clone Wars,’ it’s all about CGI

Film Notes STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS DIRECTED BY: ave Filoni STARRING: Matt Lanter (Anakin Skywalker), Ashley Eckstein (Ahsoka Tano), James Arnold Taylor (Obi-Wan Kenobi), Dee Bradley Baker (Captain Rex/Clone Troopers), Tom Kane (Yoda), Nika Futterman (Asajj Ventress), Ian Abercrombie (Chancellor Palpatine), Coey Burton (Ziro the Hutt), Catherine Taber (Padme Amidala), Anthony Daniels (C-3PO), Christopher Lee (Count Dooku), Samuel L. Jackson (Mace Windu) RUNNING TIME: 95 MINUTES TAIWAN RELEASE: TODAY

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Expectations were set so low by George Lucas’ lousy trilogy of Star Wars prequels that the latest from the Lucasfilm factory, a feature-length digital animation called Star Wars: The Clone Wars, comes as something of a surprise: it isn’t the most painful movie of the year!

Set between Episodes II and III, this new Star Wars saga (II.5?) completes the franchise’s divorce from photography-based cinema, as well as from any relationship to credible human feeling.

As a mechanical thrill ride, however, The Clone Wars has an uncluttered look and furious pace that make it more or less as satisfying as its wildly overdesigned predecessors, although it’s neither as agile nor as well made as the terrific series of short, traditionally animated Clone Wars installments shown on the Cartoon Network from 2003 to 2005.

The director, Dave Filoni, has cited Thunderbirds, the 1960s British animation series with marionettes, as an inspiration for the, uh, wooden style of his picture, but the stiff, self-important characterizations; corny space-war talk; and overheated militarism kept reminding me of Team America: World Police.

No more than a pretext for exploding robots and light-saber duels, the plot concerns the efforts of Anakin Skywalker and Ahsoka Tano, his neophyte sidekick, to secure a fragile alliance by retrieving Jabba the Hutt’s baby son from the double-crossing clutches of Count Dooku, blah, blah, blah. Exploding robots!

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