There are things to both love and hate about the new animated movie, Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Unfortunately this results in a relatively average film overall.

The story takes place between Episodes II and III after the war has broken out and fully expects you to be familiar with everything. There's no recapping and it jumps right into the action which involves the kidnapping of Jabba the Hutt's son. As the leader of the crime syndicate that dominates the Outer Rim, both the Republic and Separatist forces need Jabba's support in order to move freely in that part of the galaxy. The Jedi are tasked with returning Jabba's son to him and negotiating a peace treaty of sorts. The majority of the plot follows Anakin Skywalker and his new padawan, Ahsoka Tano. This is both a major strength and a major weakness to the movie.

First I'll start with the good. Anakin, voiced by Matt Lanter, is a man. Not a whiny little boy that I'm supposed to believe has the strength and power to become Darth Vader. This animated Anakin brings more force (pun intended) to the character than Hayden Christensen ever dreamed. So in some ways, due to that fact alone, Clone Wars improved Episode III for me. Also, although some circles are knocking the animation, I actually really enjoyed the style and found Tatooine to be particularly unique to see in this format. The style and look of it was really nice.

Now for the bad: Ahsoka Tano. I understand she is a child, but whatever this movie gained by not having a whiny Anakin, it lost with this character. I'm sure it was the point to make her similar to Anakin when he began as a padawan, but that was really unpleasant the first time around. Why bring it back in a new character? She even nicknamed Anakin "Sky Guy." Ugh.

While most of the voice acting was pretty good, I was disappointed with James Arnold Taylor's Kenobi. It sounded like a bad impression of Ewan McGregor and the delivery seemed stiff.

So How Does It End?

Jabba's son is saved by the Jedi and returned to him, but not without some shenanigans from Count Dooku.

Taking the good with the bad, its worth seeing if you are a fan of the Star Wars "world," even if the story is not absolutely necessary to tell. I give it 3 out of 5.