Star Wars: The Clone Wars

It moves fast, conquers armies, kicks into hyperspace and spits out idiotic quips with unapologetic cartoon brio. And there isn't a Jar Jar in sight.

This maiden voyage by Lucasfilm Animation dazzles with the cinematic scope of a Star Wars flick yet doesn't suffer from dreaded prequel bloat.

Ultimately falls short in overcoming the obstacles put in place by the prequels and its awkward conception as a feature film.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars has some nice animation, some good action, and a great new 'girl power' character in Ahsoka. Kids will especially love it.

It's not exactly thrilling, and it doesn't cover much new ground. But young audiences will lap it up like ice cream, and its good humor and faith in the Force will put adults in a Saturday-morning frame of mind even at midnight showings.

Fan interest in Star Wars: The Clone Wars may be high, but as Yoda might say, the modest quality of it such interest outweighs.

It is Star Wars Jr., an attempt to attract star-gazing 3- to 12-year-olds who will become so enamored with the movie that they beg their parents to buy $150 spaceships and $7 action figures.

Call me crazy, but I liked Clone Wars more than any of the recent live-action films. It's funnier, leaner and more playful (for instance, Jabba's brother has a voice that sounds exactly like Truman Capote).

Thankfully, the film has its fair share of major lightsaber battles, but these animated versions just don't pack the same intensity as their live-action counterparts.

As with videogames, there's no real reason for it to be on the big screen, instead of viewed in the comfort of home.

Clone Wars turns out to be surprisingly unterrible. It is basically a 98-minute pilot for the new children's TV series of the same name. But it's not trying to be anything more, so it works just fine.

The combat animation here is vivid, and the animation in general is almost lifelike at times.

The animation is impressive, especially the imposing futuristic war machinery. Director Dave Filoni, a veteran of TV sci-fi animation, knows how to keep things moving.

Star Wars for kiddies and helplessly addicted adults, the computer-generated The Clone Wars exists for no discernible reason other than to recharge George Lucas’ overflowing coffers.

Despite its arrival on the big screen this weekend and with the exception of some battle scenes that look especially good on that scale, the movie feels decidedly small-screen.

Die-hard Star Wars fans (are there any other kind?) will probably like it, but the violence is too much for little kids, and grown-ups are going to be bored.

The Star Wars universe is reduced to an empty parade of creatures, spaceships and war machines in the disappointing animated adventure Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

PG crowd should get a charge out of the hyperactive battle imagery, which feels less like overload here than it did when it was meshed with the prequels' live action.

It's difficult to say whether the dialogue or the characters are more wooden.

The Clone Wars is just the latest drop of anemic blood squeezed from the petrifying husk of a once innovative science-fiction franchise.

The film has several of the same problems that afflicted Lucas's live-action prequels -- there are stiff, almost cardboard performances, some tin-eared dialogue and a few moments of cornball humor.

Every five minutes a new space battle breaks out and we’re forced to pretend there’s suspense to the question of whether our heroes will prevail.

The dazzle merely hides the movie's dark side -- questionable animation decisions, annoying new characters and cheesy voice performances.

The film skips past the earlier films' iconic scroll and jumps right into the action, albeit with a voiceover set-up that sounds like it was borrowed from Starship Troopers.

Attention, all middle-aged fanboys hoping The Clone Wars will reignite that Star Wars thrill and mindwipe any bad thoughts left by the prequels: Sorry. Ain’t happening. See, Clone Wars isn’t for you at all. It’s for your kids.

It's designed to appeal to (mostly young) fans who like the nuts-and-bolts action of Star Wars and don't care to be bothered by a plot or complex themes.

George Lucas' films are like Cher's face. No matter how many times you rework the same material, it's never going to be new and fresh again. And so it is with his latest, Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

It's a simple-minded, low-stakes, woodenly written story signaling that Star Wars is now entering its Star Trek: Voyager period -- diluting its mythmaking ambition until it's nothing more than television product designed to sell toy product.

Visually attractive but with dialogue just as wooden as that in the live-action films, The Clone Wars is heavy on action and effects, as if it were also a pilot for a video game.

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.

At 100 minutes, Clone Wars is about 20 minutes too long for small children and too overstuffed with repetitive battle scenes for discerning adults. Perhaps it will be greeted with more enthusiasm from tween and teen boys.

It's a mark of how far the Star Wars franchise has fallen that a video-game-like animated spin-off like The Clone Wars can slip into theaters with little fanfare -- and still be more exciting than most of George Lucas' already-tired trilogy of prequels.

The movie's tone will probably send original-trilogy loyalists over the edge, the final shove that sends their Hoth Ice Planet action play sets into exile on eBay.

The thrill may have left the Star Wars franchise a long time ago, but that's hardly an excuse for an animated sequel-prequel that is less a movie than a marketing event: a feature-length promo for the upcoming TV series and video game tie-in.

The film's real drawback for adult Star Wars fans is its relentless dullness.

The animated characters in Clone Wars are about as lively as the actors in the live-action movies, so I guess Lucas has achieved his goal of eliminating humans from his movies altogether.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars may be the saddest attempt yet to capitalize on the success of George Lucas' original sci-fi epic.

Put simply, this is a children's movie, with non-stop light-sabre action and angry, fast-paced minimalist dialogue.

This computer-animated film -- with a story by George Lucas -- is an attempt at brand extension for a hobbled franchise. And it’s really no worse than the entries immediately preceding it in the long-time-ago-galaxy-far-away universe.

If you’d like to get caught up in the whole Star Wars milieu once again, the animated Clone Wars really isn’t the best way to do it.

Lucas' imagination has had a lasting effect on popular culture, but he's notoriously poor at telling a story, and this one doesn't have a single event or character that will interest anybody who's not already a Star Wars fanatic.

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?

An awkwardly paced and dumbly scripted hodgepodge of battles and chase scenes, a first-person-shooter video game under the guise of a movie.

The new feature-length Star Wars cartoon is so cute that I want to hug it. Tightly. Until it stops breathing.

No wonder George Lucas originally chose, with his Star Wars prequels, to skip over the Clone Wars -- they're dull and monotonous even by the new trilogy's low standards.

If you live for the flash of light sabers, the shriek of spacefighters and the symphonic swell of John Williams themes, you'll find much to enjoy in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. If you like a little narrative mixed in with your thrills, however...

A clunky computer-generated effort that seems to be little more than a pilot for Lucasfilm's new fall TV cartoon series.

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.

In watching The Clone Wars, one is filled with the overwhelming urge to grab George Lucas, thank him for his immeasurable contribution to the science fiction canon, and ask him politely to cut it out already.

Clone Wars was executive-produced by George Lucas, who may be feeling a tad sheepish about the results. The film's purpose is clear. It is a full-length teaser for the forthcoming TV series of the same name.

Not really a movie but more a pilot for the animated series of the same name that premieres this fall on Cartoon Network, Star Wars: The Clone Wars has none of the imagination or heart of George Lucas' original franchise.

Story is entirely insignificant in The Clone Wars, as it has been in the Star Wars universe since the closing credits of Return of the Jedi.

Not only do the characters look like ventriloquist dummies acting in a computer game but the vocal performances are so rigid it sounds like they’re doing the robot while speaking.

Aside from one creative scene involving a vertical assault up a mountainside, the noise and clunk of it makes your head bleed. And one big finale, not three, would suffice.

The repetitive combat sequences only add to the turgid videogame anonymity of it all. Lucas' fantasy empire has morphed into a machine that plays itself.

If the rationalization for the prequels was that they were "meant for kids," then this piece of half-assery must be meant for the even slower kids.