Lower Than Jabba's Genitals: The Clone Wars

What’s lower than Jabba’s genitals and stinks worse than Binks? Yes, it’s The Clone Wars - and it’s To Be Avoided in a cinema near you.

It was fucking terrible.

To all of us who’re old enough to have seen ‘New Hope’ at the cinema in ’77, the pitiful efforts of Lucas to live up his origins are both desperate and embarrassing. The voice-over intro was an instant let down – and set a mood of increasing disappointment for the rest of the movie.

A predictable narrative underlay a clunky script, both written by a crack team of twelve-year-olds – I was cringing during the ubiquitous fight ‘badinage’ between Kenobi and Ventress.

The caricature of the ‘buddy’ relationship between Anakin and his supposedly-cute Padawan – I would have punched Ahsoka in the face after about five minutes.

With the notable exception of Christopher Lee (what was he doing, involved in that?!) the voice acting was wooden and the ‘relief’ provided by comedy droids miserably conventional. That, at least, had the row of kids behind me giggling.

As for the Hutt baby – words… just fail me.

At any moment, I was half-expecting the screen to flick to game-mode, whereupon I would’ve picked up my controller and joyfully run any one of the main characters to a gruesome death upon the advancing droid tanks.

What fired the shot into the main reactor, though, was the sudden, tacked-on side-plot involving Padme and – I can barely control my shudder – Ziro the Hutt.

It’s been years since I actually walked out of a cinema before the end of a film, but the cliché of the camp and lisping Ziro was enough to drive me from my seat and out into the air, gasping for breath at the depth of the horror. Whoever conceived that character should be executed for crimes against the Star Wars franchise.

I beg you, don’t go and see this film. If you ever loved Star Wars, spend your money on the DVD of Seth Green’s Robot Chicken send-up – a true work of animated genius.