For kids only this is

Star Wars: The Clone Wars ««½
PG, 98m., 2008

Cast & Credits: Featuring the voices of Matt Lanter (Anakin Skywalker), Ashley Eckstein (Ahsoka Tano), James Arnold Taylor (Obi-Wan Kenobi/4-A7/Medical Droid), Dee Bradley Baker (Clone Troopers/Captain Rex/Cody), Tom Kane (Yoda/Narrator/Admiral Yularen), Nika Futterman (Asajj Ventress/Tee-C-Seventy), Ian Abercrombie (Chancellor Palpatine/Darth Sidious), Corey Burton (General Loathsom/Ziro the Hutt/Kronos-327), Catherine Taber (Padme Amidala), Matthew Wood (Battle Droids), Kevin Michael Richardson (Jabba the Hutt), David Acord (Rotta the Huttlet), Samuel L. Jackson (Mace Windu), Anthony Daniels (C-3PO), Christopher Lee (Count Dooku). Screenplay by Henry Gilroy, Steven Melching, and Scott Murphy based on story, characters, and universe created by George Lucas. Directed by Dave Filoni.



“That was awesome!”

If that comment I had heard from someone walking out of the first morning showing of the animated cartoon, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, had come from an actual adult who was my age, I probably would have taken what he said seriously.

The comment, however, did not come from an adult, but from a young kid who was probably not much older than say ten-years-old. In fact, when Star Wars: The Clone Wars ended, there were actual cheers emanating from the audience. Those cheers of applause, though, came from the kids whose parents took them to see it.

Such are the kinds of positive comments you will likely hear from the young ones who see this latest Star Wars animated adventure. You are not likely to hear it from any adults my age. I am not even certain you are going to hear it from the die-hard fans.

To be honest, Star Wars: The Clone Wars is a “for kids only movie” the way Sex and the City: The Movie (2008) was strictly for women fans of the television series and men with a fetish for either admiring or wearing expensive high heels.

I can understand why “younglings” will enjoy it. Every five to ten minutes we get plenty of laser fights featuring Clone Armies battling mindless war droids. When there aren’t ground wars going on, there is plenty of sword fighting to watch as Jedi Knights Anakin Skywalker (voice by Matt Lanter) and his new female Jedi apprentice Ahsoka Tano (voice by Ashley Eckstein), along with Obi-Wan Kenobi (voice by James Arnold Taylor) activate their lightsabers to do battle against separatist villains. They include Count Dooku (voice by Christopher Lee reprising his role from Star Wars – Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002) and Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005) and his own dark Jedi apprentice, Asajj Ventress (Nika Futterman).

Not only does it have a character female kiddies can identify with or perhaps root for in the form of Ahsoka Tano, the film also incorporates the cuteness factor as well. That comes in the form of a baby slug Hutt, (crime lord Jabba the Hutt has a son) who when ill, has the ability to turn all sorts of colors with the exception of its normal healthy one that I assume is brown.

Add up the amount of screen time for the fight scenes, which probably comes close to an hour of action and an additional half hour more of dialogue and you get a 98-minute Saturday morning cartoon, provided it does air on Saturday mornings. The film, whose events take place between the end of Episodes II and III is a prelude to the highly anticipated half hour Star Wars cartoon series scheduled to air on TNT this October.

If I was a kid under the age of ten, I probably would have responded to The Clone Wars cartoon the same way that one boy did. After all, when I was that young watching the original classic Star Wars trilogy, and such sci-fi television shows as Battlestar Galactica (1978-79) and Buck Rogers In the 25th Century, (1979-81) the one thing I enjoyed most were the outer space dogfights and visual effects eye candy. As a kid, what did I know about writing convincing dialogue or conjuring up an interesting storyline?

Watching The Clone Wars, critics like myself, and probably even fans and non fans would likely allow their minds to wander as far as the gutter asking themselves how Hutts sexually mate and ponder such questions as who is Jabba’s wife and what happened to her or it? Or was it a she? How can you tell the difference between a male and female Hutt? Are they really male or female? I guess Hutts are human, after all, Harrison Ford's smuggling pirate Han Solo called Jabba “a wonderful human being” in the 1997 Star Wars: Special Edition. Then again, he could have been acting sarcastic. I could go on and on with this. A kid, however, is not going to ponder such things. They will be too busy marveling at the visual effects eye candy on the big screen.

I won’t argue that the possibility existed that a lot more engaging stories could have been told between the events of Episodes II and III but I am not so sure this plot, where Separatists kidnap Jabba’s baby and use him as a ploy to turn the Hutts against the Jedi, is a notably worthy tale in the Star Wars universe. The story is instantly forgettable.

The animated film is a children’s equivalent of those two hour made-for-tv shows creator George Lucas made after the original trilogy ended in 1983 that featured those dancing teddy bears called Ewoks.

I was hoping, given the amount of negative reviews The Clone Wars is getting, to have gladly placed this film in that group of pictures I call “Films that are not as bad as the critics say it is” like Superman III (1983), Event Horizon (1997) and even Lucas' own Star Wars - Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999). It is unfortunately, a slight notch below those titles. Kids will like it. I predict a majority of adults will not. I know I didn't.

For someone like me who is now approaching forty, whose love of Star Wars is really more focused on the original trilogy than the prequels, and has lost a lot of interest in the continuing toy marketing franchise die-hard fans continue to cling to every year at the conventions where the phrase is uttered,“Star Wars is forever!”, I find this movie, and possibly the upcoming cartoon series itself, difficult to embrace.

Still, there is no denying that Star Wars: The Clone Wars will probably make for a good alternative to Saturday morning cartoon fare for kids under the age of ten who are not into watching Miley Cyrus or The Suite Life With Zack and Cody. I, for one, at least would be grateful for if I was a parent, I’d much rather see my kid watch animated laser battles for a half hour than watch a show where a teenage rock star sings about how she has the best of both worlds.

©8/16/08

"Here we go again!"

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor «««
PG-13, 114m., 2008

Cast & Credits: Brendan Fraser (Rick O’Connell), Jet Li (Emperor Han), Maria Bello (Evelyn O’Connell), John Hannah (Jonathan Carnahan), Michelle Yeoh (Zi Juan), Luke Ford (Alex O’Connell), Isabella Leong (Lin), Anthony Wong Chau-Sang (General Yang), Liam Cunningham (Mad Dog Maguire). Directed by Rob Cohen. Screenplay by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar.



I can't quite remember what it was I didn't like about The Mummy Returns (2001), the sequel to the unexpected box office hit of 1999, The Mummy, starring Brendan Fraser as an Indiana Jones type archeologist who battles a deposed 2000 year-old pharaoh awakened by greedy explorers.

I know I had a hard time convincing myself that it was a large scorpion that Fraser and his pals battled in The Mummy Returns because every time I saw the large beast on screen, instead of looking at a giant scorpion (which it was), I was looking at a scorpion boasting the familiar face of wrestler Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in his movie debut. This was on top of the fact I found the digital visual effects awkward when it came to incorporating The Rock’s face onto the scorpion. The moving image just didn’t look real.

I also found the addition of Fraser’s young son to be annoying. He was like the younger sibling whose parents allow him to tag along with his older brother, despite the older one’s protests.

Thankfully, that young kid is now grown up in The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. As the son of both Rick (Fraser) and Evelyn O’Connell (Maria Bello), Alex (Luke Ford), now a fly-by-night archeologist since he dropped out of college, unearths an ancient tomb in China that will no doubt raise supernatural consequences.

I predictably knew it wouldn't be long before the O’Connell family was back again on another adventure that included joining forces with undead warriors to battle the Dragon Emperor, a trio of Yetis (abominable snowmen), an ancient warrior (Isabella Leong) who actually speaks “Yeti” if there is such a language, and a trip to Shangri-La where apparently there is a special power available where one can become immortal, if one is lucky to find it.

If Tomb of the Dragon Emperor had been the second film to come out two years after the first one instead of seven years later, I probably would have been more prone to giving it a negative review. Like the first one where we learned about the rise and fall of the first mummy, this third installment wreaks of déjà vu as it opens with a brief background story about a Dragon Emperor (Jet Li) who is damned to Hell along with his army after refusing to keep his promise to an ancient witch (Michelle Yeoh).

The good news is like The Incredible Hulk (2008), the visual effects here don’t look as unrealistic as they did in The Mummy Returns. At least when Jet Li turns into a three headed fire breathing flying dragon, it doesn’t have his face transposed onto the creature. It’s real enough to have one drunken pilot ask Rick in one memorably humorous scene if he should stop drinking.

I liked the father/son bonding relationship between Rick and Alex where the only thing the two have in common is comparing who has the better guns. And Maria Bello, taking over the role abandoned by Rachel Weisz who declined to star in this one, shows she is just as capable of holding her own against the mummies as her husband.

What it boils down to is Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, like the first one, is a fun, senseless popcorn movie that doesn’t require any thinking to be able to enjoy it. I suppose I could debate the plot saying the possibility that abominable snowmen exist is as much an urban legend as Big Foot and the Loch Ness Monster. I also doubt there is such a heavenly place as Shangri-La where immortality can be achieved but hey, it is nice to dream.

Some days, I just don’t care to be that critical. It’s either that, or maybe on the day I saw Dragon Emperor, I just happened to be in a good mood.

©8/6/08