Initially this sounded very exciting when I first heard the idea suggested, if George Lucas didn't want to spend a load of time shooting live action and spending millions of dollars then why not do an animated movie.
Sadly we knew the movie was doomed once the cast list was revealed to contain virtually none of the prequal cast. Only Christopher Lee, Samuel L Jackson & Anthony Daniels reprised their original roles with complete unknowns voicing the other roles.
The events of this movie take place before Revenge Of The Sith just to establish some kind of timeline. Previous fans of the Cartoon Network animated series The Clone Wars will be more familiar with the storyline and when it is supposed to take place.
For fans who were previously unaware of that series this may be a little difficult to initially follow or work out when it is. You can't really think of this as either a new Star Wars movie or a Star Wars movie in its own right, what it is turns out to be nothing more than a pilot for the next animated Clone Wars series.
The characters themselves are pretty well drawn on the whole and do accurately reflect their movie counterparts but you are left to wonder how much money George Lucas squandered in trying to get this into movie theatres merely to attract attention for a new tv series that most Star Wars fans already knew was coming any way.
The start of this will instantly annoy or divide fans as there is no opening title crawl as known and beloved to most Star Wars fans, instead it is replaced by a Flash Gordon style Narrator explaining what the current Star Wars universe situation is. Jabba The Hutts son is kidnapped by pirates so Mace Windu sends Anakin & Obi Wan to go and rescue him.
If you aren't a huge fan you probably won't notice the tiny differences in the voice portrayals of roles like Anakin, Obi Wan, Yoda & Palpatine although the characterizations of them (as well as the animations of The Clone Troopers, the space ships and the droid army will all seem immediately familar as they are pretty much exactly like in the movie however Obi Wan appears to have had some sort of make over by Loreal as his hair and beard look very weird indeed) may differ slightly from the live action films.
We get to meet Anakins Padewan Ahsoka (who he more frequently refers to as "Snips" although its never explained why and I can't work it out either) and after liberating a planet they go off on their mission to rescue Jabbas son. Obviously the mission is fraught with danger and we encounter a Sith Padewan Ventress who serves Count Dooku along the way. There are the usual collection of numerous large ground and space battles as well as light saber duels between Jedi & Sith.
Senator Amidala is captured by Jabbas brother who it is revealed was the kidnapper working for Count Dooku and she is rescued by C3P0, she explains he tried to frame the Jedi for the kidnap and she explains the truth and Jabba is reunited with his son. Its left as a very open ending to allow the series to develop the storyline further. Judged on its own merits its a decent animated feature made on the cheap by sourcing out most of the animation to Singapore and saving even more money by not rehiring most of the original actors to do voiceovers.
As a Star Wars film its awful and true fans will probably be very divided on it. Whether it will entice you into watching the new Clone Wars TV series (if you aren't already watching it) remains to be seen. It's just not very good as a stand alone movie and its truly awful as part of the series if your unaware of the series that went before it. I think George Lucas assumed a heck of a lot and alienated a lot of his potential audience in doing so.
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