Film

Is it possible to rip off yourself? This ugly, lumbering mess feels strangely like a tired Star Wars wanna-be, but made by people with the rights to the characters. A lame entry in the endless (or at least endlessly profitable) Star Wars saga, it features ugly, video-game-quality animation and a scrappy new Jedi-in-training named Ahsoka Tano (Eckstein), whose spunky attitude and habit of calling Anakin Skywalker “Skyguy” (ooh, she’s irreverent) feel as calculated as the surfer-dude posturing of Poochie the Dog. Yeah, it’s that kind of movie. Your eight-year-old will sort of
enjoy it, while you will decry the declining quality of children’s entertainment.

Grumpy pre-evil Anakin (Lanter) is pulled out of a battle between a clone army and a droid army (action set piece No. 1) to investigate the kidnapping of Jabba the Hutt’s child. The rescue mission takes Anakin and Ahsoka to an abandoned monastery, where they fight their way out of an obvious trap (action set piece No. 2) before rushing the adorable little Huttling back to Tatooine. There, the evil Count Dooku (Lee) tries to stop them (action set piece No. 3, with crosscutting between two lightsaber battles). You’ve seen it before, and it was better than this.