Three years after the second trilogy wrapped up with the much anticipated Revenge Of The Sith, this seventh full-length Star Wars theatrical release - a computer animated film called The Clone Wars, intended to bridge the gap between the second and third live action prequel flicks - has arrived. While casual and die hard fans alike mightn't object to an additional entry into the saga's multifarious iconography, by pushing it into theatres, creator George Lucas and director Dave Filoni (Avatar: The Last Airbender) have laden The Clone Wars with expectations well beyond other auxiliary releases, such as the two '80s made-for-TV Ewok films (Caravan Of Courage and The Battle For Endor, both released theatrically internationally), and the multitude of books, television shows, video games and merchandise emblazoned with the Star Wars heraldry.

This film fails to live up to the most modest of those expectations, delivering a disappointing shell of a story that leans heavily on impressive, extremely fast paced and ubiquitous action sequences to help disguise moronic dialogue. Less troubling is the rather rhomboidal, video game-like animation, which - while surely within Masahiro Mori's "uncanny valley" (which posits that robots designed to look like humans are by nature eerie) - has the captivity to be quite stunning at stages, especially in its many colossal battle scenes. Any complaints about this movie's weaknesses can be effectively explained away by calling it a children's film, and it is. But that old nugget only holds so much water; this was never going to be The Empire Strikes Back but, by cashing in so shamelessly (and so late), Lucas removes whimsy and nostalgia, his former strengths.