Episode 5 - Star Wars: The Clone Wars

Dave and Diane review Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

Voice Acting: Both Dave and Diane thought the acting was quite weak. Aside from Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson) and C-3PO (Anthony Daniels), the characters were all voiced by new people (who didn't particularly sound like the originals). Diane thought the acting was passionless and Dave thought the characters nicknames were obnoxcious (such as Anakin's "Sky Guy").

Directing: There was little to remark on about Dave Filoni's directing (Dave thought it was about average). Diane was surprised that this was Filoni's first feature film directing position.

Music: Oh...Well, we all forget sometimes, don't we? Show notes exclusive: Dave and Diane liked the music, but didn't think it was as good as the classic Star Wars scores.

Message: Once again, little to note here, other than the classic "good defeats evil" from Star Wars. Nice for the kids, but nothing new.

Animation Style: Dave thought the animation was weak, with poor character animation. However, Dave thought given more time, the movie could have been quite good (in the vein of a cell-shaded video game). Dave noted that it paled in comparison to the realism of a movie like WALL-E, but thought that its unrealistic appearance was fine. Diane essentially agreed, noting that the character's movements were poor and their mouth movements were rather off from their voices.

Plot: Both Dave and Diane thought the plot was okay. It was a simple good vs. evil sort of tale. It was definately geared towards children, and consisted of mainly battle scenes. Dave thought the battle scenes were done very well, and that the story had nice throwbacks for Star Wars fans(such as Commander Cody).

Comparison to Older Star Wars Movies: Only Dave remarked here, as Diane is not a Star Wars fan. Dave believed that this was no where near as epic or mature as the live action movies, and should certainly not be looked at as the seventh Star Wars movie. Rather, Dave thought it should be looked as an enjoyable tangent. He felt that it was a movie for younger children as well.

Overall Grades: Both Dave and Diane gave the movie a C+, as it had many significant flaws. However, both thought it was enjoyable, and thought it was a great movie for the whole family (Dave's brother Alex, who's seven years old, gave it an A+++!)

Dave's DVD of the Week: This week, Dave reviewed the documentary In The Shadow of the Moon, about the Apollo moon landings. Dave thought it was great, and gave it a strong B+. He liked the fact that it was totally told in the words of the surviving astronauts from the moon landings (aside from Neil Armstrong). This was placed in conjunction with beautiful and some even unseen NASA footage. The only issues Dave had with the movie were the fact that it was too short, jumped around too much, focussed to heavily on Apollo 11, and delved for part of the movie into the spiratual aspects for the astronauts, where scientific or political aspects would have been more fitting. This is a must buy for space buffs.

We're still agreeing, and still keeping it reel!

The music for this episode was provided by the Podshow Podsafe Music Network. Check them out here: http://music.podshow.com.

http://m.podshow.com/media/19061/episodes/123212/getreelpodcast-123212-08-21-2008.mp3