Star Wars animated feature shows all the signs that shortcuts were taken in the animation work ...

Has it come to this?  Has the magical impact of George Lucas’ original vision of Star Wars been reduced to the level of Saturday morning animation?  Star Wars: The Clone Wars, which is a continuation of an earlier animated TV series, is basically just a 98-minute trailer for the autumn launch of a new series on the Cartoon Network. 



The familiar Star Wars logo and the pulse-pounding John Williams score now lift the curtain on a deadening film that cuts corners on its animation and slumbers through a plot that (a) makes us feel like we’ve seen it all before, and (b) makes us wish we hadn’t.  The action takes place between the events in the “real” movies Episode II: Attack of the Clones and Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.  The Republic is still at war with the Separatists, its access to the Galactic Rim is threatened, and much depends on pleasing the odious Jabba the Hutt, whose child had been kidnapped — by the Jedi, he is told. 



It’s up to Anakin Skywalker and his new Padawan pupil, Ahsoka Tano, to find the infant, as meanwhile Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda lead the resistance to a Separatist onslaught.  And if all of this means little to you, you might as well stop reading now.  It won’t get any better. 

This is the first feature-length animated Star Wars movie, but instead of pushing the state of the art, it’s retro.  You’d think the great animated films of recent years had never been made. 



The characters have hair that looks molded from Play-Doh, bodies that seem arthritic, and moving lips on half-frozen faces — all signs that shortcuts were taken in the animation work. 



The dialogue in the original Star Wars movies had a certain grace, but here the characters speak to each other in simplistic declamation, and Yoda gets particularly tiresome with his once-charming speech pattern.  To quote a famous line by Wolcott Gibbs, “Backward ran sentences until reeled the mind.” 



The battle scenes are interminable, especially once we realize that although the air is filled with bullets, shells and explosive rockets, no one we like is going to be killed.  The two armies attack each other, for some reason, only on a wide street in a towering city.  First one army advances, then the other.  Why not a more fluid battle plan?  To save money on backgrounds, I assume.  The trick that Anakin and his Padawan learner use to get behind the enemy force field (essentially, they hide under a box) wouldn’t even have fooled anybody in a Hopalong Cassidy movie — especially when they stand up and run with their legs visible, but can’t see where they’re going. 



Ahsoka Tano, by the way, is annoying.  She bats her grapefruit-sized eyes at Anakin and offers suggestions that invariably prove her right and her teacher wrong.  At least when we first met Yoda, he was offering useful advice.  Which reminds me, I’m probably wrong, but I don’t think anyone in this movie ever refers to the Force. 



You know you’re in trouble when the most interesting new character is Jabba the Hutt’s uncle.  The big revelation is that Jabba has an infant to be kidnapped.  The big discovery is that Hutts look like that when born, only smaller.  The question is, who is Jabba’s wife?  The puzzle is, how do Hutts copulate?  Like snails, I speculate.  If you don’t know how snails do it, let’s not even go there.  The last thing this movie needs is a Jabba the Hutt sex scene. 

Star Wars: The Clone Wars

One and half stars



Starring the voices of: Matt Lanter, James Arnold Taylor and Ashley Eckstein

Director: Dave Filoni

Rated: PG for sci-fi action violence throughout, brief language and momentary smoking

Setting the record straight

Roger disagrees with some negative reviews of this tender love story



Henry Poole Is Here achieves something that is uncommonly difficult.  It is a spiritual movie with the power to emotionally touch believers, agnostics and atheists — in that descending order, I suspect.  It doesn’t say that religious beliefs are real.  It simply says that belief is real.  And it’s a warmhearted love story. 



It centers on a man named Henry Poole (Luke Wilson), who has only one problem when he moves into a house.  He is dying.  Then he acquires another problem.  His neighbor Esperanza (Adriana Barraza) sees the face of Jesus Christ in a stain on his stucco wall.  Henry Poole doesn’t see the face, and indeed neither do we most of the time, even if we squint.  It’s a hit-or-miss sort of thing. 



Wilson plays Henry as hostile and depressed.  Well, he has much to be depressed about. “We hardly ever see this disease in the States,” the doctor tells him.  “It steamrolls through your system.”  Patience (Rachel Seiferth), the nearly blind checkout girl at the supermarket, gives him dietary hints when she notices he buys mostly vodka and frozen pizza.  Although her glasses are half an inch thick, she’s observant: “Why are you sad and angry all the time?” 



Henry starts hearing voices in his backyard.  There is a rational reason for this.  He is being secretly recorded by Millie (Morgan Lily), the 5-year-old who lives next door on the other side from Esperanza.  Millie’s mother is the lovely Dawn (Radha Mitchell), who apologizes for her daughter, brings cookies, also notices how sad and angry Henry is.  He is especially angry with Esperanza, warning her to stay out of his yard and stop praying to his bad stucco job.  But she has seen Jesus and cannot be stopped.  She brings in Father Salazar (George Lopez), who explains that the church does not easily declare miracles, but keeps an open mind. 



There are more details, which I must not reveal, including certain properties of the wall.  I will observe that the director, Mark Pellington, uses some of the most subtle special effects you’ve probably seen for some time to fine-tune the illusion that the face of Christ is really there, or really not there.  I will now think of this movie every time I drive through the Fullerton Avenue underpass of the Kennedy Expressway in Chicago, where since April 2005 people have said they can see the Virgin Mary in a wall stain.  There are always flowers there. 



The thing is, certain miraculous events take place, and the people involved believe it is because they touched Henry’s wall.  Patience the checkout girl even quotes the formidable intellectual Noam Chomsky, who, she informs Henry, said some things cannot be explained by science.  One critic of this film believes it is anti-science and pounds you over the head to believe.  Not at all.  It is simply that Chomsky is right, as any scientist will tell you.  What do I believe?  I believe science can eventually explain everything, but only if it gets a whole lot better than it is now and discovers realms we do not even suspect.  You could call such a realm God.  You could, of course, call it anything you wanted; it wouldn’t matter to the realm. 

Another critic, or maybe it is the same critic, believes the movie is a Hollywood ploy to reach the Christian market.  Not at all.  Esperanza sees Jesus because the face of Jesus is ready in her mind, supplied by holy cards and paintings.  You might see the face of Uncle Sam.  No one knows what Jesus looked like.  It is also strange that the Virgin’s appearances always mirror her holy card image.  People from biblical lands at that time would have been a good deal darker and shorter.  The movie gets that right: The image is so low on the wall that Jesus must have stood less than five feet tall. 



But I stray, and I do injustice to this film.  I fell for it.  I believed the feelings between Henry and Dawn.  I cared about their tenderness and loneliness.  I thought Millie was adorable.  I thought Father Salazar had his head on straight.  I loved Esperanza’s great big heart.  And I especially admired the way that Henry stuck to his guns.  He doesn’t believe there’s a face on his stucco, and that’s that.  And no, he doesn’t undergo a deathbed conversion.  That’s because ... but find out for yourself. 

Henry Poole is Here

Three and a half stars

Stars: Luke Wilson, Radha Mitchell and George Lopez

Director: Mark Pellington

Rated: PG for thematic elements and some language

American Teen overcomes early concerns

We doubt certain scenes would have really occurred on camera, but the overall effect is convincing and touching

American Teen observes a year in the life of four high school seniors in Warsaw, Ind.  It is presented as a documentary, and indeed these students, their friends and families are all real people, and these are their stories.  But many scenes seem suspiciously staged.  Why would Megan, the “most popular” girl in school, allow herself to be photographed spreading toilet paper on a lawn and spray-painting “FAG” on the house window of a classmate?  Is she really that unaware?  She’s the subject of disciplinary action in the film; why didn’t she tell the school official she only did it for the movie? 

Many questions like that occur while you’re watching American Teen, but once you make allowance for the factor of directorial guidance, the movie works effectively as what it wants to be: a look at these lives, in this town (“mostly middle-class, white and Christian”), at this time. 

The director is Nanette Burstein, whose credits include the considerable documentaries On the Ropes and The Kid Stays in the Picture.  She spent a year in Warsaw, reportedly shot 1,000 hours of footage, and focused on four students who represent segments of the high school population. 

Megan Krizmanich is pretty, on the school council, a surgeon’s daughter, “popular,” but sometimes considered a bitch. S he dreams of going to Notre Dame, as her father, a brother and a sister did.  She seems supremely self-confident until late in the film, when we learn about a family tragedy that her mother blames for her “buried anger.” 

Colin Clemens, with a Jay Leno chin, is the basketball star.  His dad has a sideline as an Elvis impersonator (pretty good, too).  The family doesn’t have the money to send him to college, so everything depends on winning an athletic scholarship, a fact he is often reminded of.  He doesn’t have a star personality, is a nice guy, funny. 

Hannah Bailey is the girl who wants to get the hell out of Warsaw.  She dreams of studying film in San Francisco.  Her parents warn her of the hazards of life for a young girl alone in the big city, but she doesn’t want to spend her life at a 9-to-5 job she hates.  “This is my life,” she firmly tells her parents.  She also goes into a deep depression when a boyfriend breaks up with her and misses so many days of school as a result that she is threatened with not graduating. 

And Jake Tusing is the self-described nerd, member of the band, compulsive video game player, who decorates his room with an astonishing array of stuffed, framed or mounted animals.  He has a bad case of acne, which is a refreshing touch, since so many movie teenagers seem never to be afflicted with that universal problem. 

During this year, a guy will break up with his girl by cell phone.  A topless photo of a girl will be circulated by Internet and cell phone to everyone in school and, seemingly, in the world.  Megan will make a cruel phone call to the girl.  Romances will bloom and crash.  Crucial basketball games will be played.  And the focus will increasingly be on what comes next: college or work?  Warsaw or the world? 

Warsaw Community High School, with its sleek modern architecture, seems like a fine school, but we don’t see a lot of it.  Most of the scenes take place in homes, rec rooms, basements, fast-food restaurants, basketball games and school dances (curiously, hardly anyone in the film smokes, although one girl says she does).  We begin to grow familiar with the principals and their circles, and start to care about them; there’s a certain emotion on graduation day. 

American Teen isn’t as penetrating or obviously realistic as her On the Ropes, but Nanette Burstein (who won the best directing award at Sundance 2008) has achieved an engrossing film.  No matter what may have been guided by her outside hand, it is all in some way real, and often touching. 

American Teen

Three stars

Director: Nanette Burstein

Rated: PG-13 for some strong language, sexual material, some drinking and biref smoking — all involving teens.