Force is Weak in Clone Wars

Star Wars: The Clone Wars fills a gap in the saga's chronology, and although the animated feature may give devoted Lucasfilm fans their fix before the TV series launches this fall, the oddly lifeless movie "isn't the Star Wars we've known and loved, Todd McCarthy writes in Variety.

The animation makes the characters look and move like marionettes, says Michael Rechtshaffen in the Hollywood Reporter, turning Anakin into "a real mannequin."  Younger audiences probably won't mind that the plot consists of an endless string of battle sequences, Carrie Rickey writes in the Philadelphia Inquirer, but ultimately "Clone Wars is to Star Wars what karaoke is to pop music." (More Star Wars stories.)