Galaxy wars are animated this time

MOVIE REVIEW

"Star Wars: The Clone Wars"

Grade: C+

With the voices of Matt Lanter, Ashley Eckstein, Samuel L. Jackson, Anthony Daniels and Christopher Lee. Directed by Dave Filoni. Rated PG (sci-fi action violence throughout, brief language and momentary smoking). At metro theaters. 1 hour, 38 minutes.

Bottom line: A little better than expected.

Leave it to George Lucas, or somebody he'd hire, to see Jabba the Hutt's "uncle" as an English-speaking, hookah-puffing blob voiced by a Truman Capote impersonator.

But this "Clone Wars" big-screen preview of the new fall TV series is actually better than expected. Action-packed computer animation with long, lean, gaunt characters who look like a cartoon El Greco might have whipped up on his Macintosh, the film brings familiar characters (Anakin, Obi-Wan, Jabba, Count Dooku, Padme, Mace, Yoda) into the middle of the wars that earlier movies and a TV series touched on —- the war between the Clone soldiers of the Republic and the Droid soldiers of the Sith.

Jabba the Hutt's slimy little larvae (his son) has been larvae-napped. And since he is the "all wise and powerful Jabba" who controls the trade routes to the outer rim of the galaxy "far far away," both the Jedi and the Sith want to be the ones to rescue the kid.

This well-financed rebellion is able to mount major space battles, enlist (or enslave) new star systems and stage planet-by-planet invasions, which the Republic and its Jedi generals fend off one by one. The combat animation here is vivid, and the animation in general is almost lifelike at times.

New grace notes to the series? They finally get away from the John Williams-and-only-John Williams theme with excursions into Middle Eastern pop and a riff on the jazz classic "Harlem Nocturne." And for the first time in memory, the shootouts show soldiers actually running out of electronic laser blast ammo.

Samuel L. Jackson, Christopher Lee and Anthony Daniels reprise their roles, as voices. The rest? Impersonators of Ewan McGregor, Frank Oz et al. And some of the dialogue they utter is clunky in the extreme.

"Have her meet with an accident with extreme prejudice." Harrison Ford's insult to Lucas while shooting the first "Star Wars" movie still applies: