The most frustrating thing about "The Gungan General" was that you could, if you squinted a bit and filled in a lot of gaps for yourself, see what they were trying to do with the episode - A lighter, more broad version of the traditional Star Wars rogue-and-rescue formula played for laughs. Looking at it from that perspective, you can see why the bad guys (In this case, the pirates who'd managed to take Anakin, Obi Wan and Count Dooku prisoner) weren't so scary, and the forced buddy movie dynamic between the Jedi and Sith makes more sense. There's no excuse for the unfunny comedy with Jar-Jar Binks, mind you, but I find that I often default to a zero tolerance policy where he's concerned.
The real problem with the episode was that it went too broad, and as a result, didn't hold together well; especially problematic was the way in which the over-the-top slapstick of the Jar-Jar thread (which included him defeating the bad guys by literally falling all over them) tied in with the moderately more-straight Anakin/Obi-Wan plot, leaving you with the idea that the Jedi would've been better served to collapse and say "meesa sorry" a lot instead of their various unsuccessful attempts to escape captivity. It's a shame, because their section of the show worked, for the most part; seeing the strained, yet respectful, interaction between Dooku and the Jedi, and their escape plans, was the highlight of the show, and the kind of thing that I'd like to see more of in the show, a step outside of the binary Good Guy/Bad Guy thinking that the series often falls into.
Instead, what we were given was a wasted opportunity - even moreso, given how good the first part of the story was, last week - and a reminder that, for all its potential, Clone Wars has yet to figure out what kind of a show it really wants to be just yet. In case they're reading this, here's a clue: Keep Jar-Jar out the way, and things'll be a lot better.

What was most interesting about "Bombad Jedi," last night's episode of the animated series, was how true Threepio and Jar-Jar seemed to their movie versions. Unlike Obi-Wan, Yoda and, especially, Anakin, there was no sense that the characters had been simplified or changed in any way for the Cartoon Network audience - but that's almost the only plus about the otherwise disappointing episode. Again we had a Princess being captured - although she did free herself, which was a nice change - and again we had a neutral party siding with the bad guys before realizing that they'd make a terrible, terrible mistake.

Given all the slapstick humor and "Oh, Jar-Jar" eye-rolling from the other characters - "He was always such a misfit," as C3-P0 said during one of the times that they thought Jar-Jar was dead -it's clear that this episode was meant as a comedic breather between the kid version of sturm-und-drang from the other episodes, and on that level, it was probably a success; certainly, fans of the peculiar, unfunny Star Wars comedy wouldn't have been disappointed by Jar-Jar accidentally destroying his space ship, or the dumb evil droids falling for the old "hiding in a corner" escape trick. For everyone else, though, this was a half hour of throwaway television that didn't particularly excite or entertain. Better luck next time, I guess.

Whether or not you really enjoy The Clone Wars probably depends on how you approach it; if you're going in expecting the most awesomest animated movie ever made purely because it's Star Wars, then you're going to be disappointed (That's still Ratatouille). Similarly, if you're expecting something that's going to be just like the three prequel movies, you're not getting that, either - but that's a good thing. While Clone Wars shares both characters and a tendency for unfunny humor with Episodes 1 through 3, it's also less weighed down with its own mythology and faster moving than any Star Wars movie you've seen recently.

There's a lot to like about the movie, not least of which is the fact that the plot steers relatively clear of the main clone vs. droid war to something that is complete in and of the movie itself, and stars everyone's favorite Hutt (and his family, who you've already read about by now). It starts out incredibly strongly, with a newsreel-style intro that's reminiscent of the scrolls of the earlier films, but updated and appropriately over the top for this new series, giving you all the history you need to know in order to enjoy what you're about to see. Sadly, almost everything that follows, no matter how fun it ends up being, fails to live up to that opening.
It's not that anything about the movie is bad, as such, because it's completely enjoyable throughout. The problem is that it's "just" enjoyable, and you want it to be so much more, very much like the most recent Indiana Jones movie, with problems including that the animation only really comes to life in the battle sequences (partially because that's one of the few times that the characters move in a believable manner), the dialogue errs towards the familiar Lucas clunkiness where plot exposition always triumphs over character, and - most importantly - we're robbed of any real dramatic tension throughout the entire story, because we going in knowing that (almost) all of the main players will survive to appear in Revenge Of The Sith.

The one exception to that rule is Ahsoka, Anakin's new padawan learner, who may be the single most annoying new character that Lucasfilm has come up with since Jar-Jar. Ignore Ziro The Hutt (Actually, don't; he's hilarious in an over-the-top charicature way), Ahsoka will have your teeth on edge with her "plucky" nickname for Anakin and overly-familiar "I pretend to be cocky, but really I'm uncertain about my role" demeanor. With her modern (and modern cartoon-sidekick) demeanor, she seems out of place in the more mannered SW universe, and her presence keeps drawing you out of the story and back towards thoughts that someone, somewhere probably had the (bad) idea that they should try and make the movie more "hep" for "the kids" early in the development process.

But with all of that said, there's one thing that The Clone Wars manages to do very successfully, and that's make you believe that animation is the best vehicle for this kind of story. Even with the uneven character design (When the characters are very abstracted, like Obi-Wan or Count Dooku, they look wonderful, especially with the little touches like the brushwork color, but less-important characters get less attention, and seem to have wandered in from a Dreamworks movie at times) and uncertain movement, there is a coherence to the look of everything that no amount of CGI/live-action hybrid could touch. I came out of the theater feeling as if the movie had been good enough, if kind of slight, but definitely convinced that the TV series to follow - freed of the scale of a movie theater and able to follow all the interesting side-trips that the movie suggested - would be must-see TV. And maybe that's exactly what the movie was intended for, in the end.

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