Star Wars: The Clone Wars

Perhaps the worst movie I received for Christmas was the recent Star Wars animated feature film set to come out with the Clone Wars TV show. While the film prequels were of dubious quality, this movie is in an entirely different category all together. While the voice work and animation style is generally fine, the plot is weak at best: set between Episodes II and III, this film follows Anakin and his new apprentice as they try to rescue Jabba the Hutt's baby, who was kidnapped by Dooku's apprentice in a plot to frame the Jedi. Yeah, pretty lame, especially considering neither Anakin nor Dooku's apprentices are even mentioned in Episode III. Ultimately though, the movie is about as good as you would expect a full-length version of the TV show to be, so when appreciated as such, it's not all that horrible...

Perhaps the most puzzling decision in the film is the introduction of Jabba's uncle Ziro, a gangster of sorts who runs a bar and crime ring on Coruscant and to whom Amidala turns for help in the whole fiasco. The strange thing about this is that although Ziro is in fact male, he looks and acts more like a female, leading me to believe he's possibly the first openly gay character in the Star Wars film universe... Just watch the clip above (skip the intro though, as it was created by the YouTube poster) to see what I mean... It's as if you took Jabba and combined him with equal parts New Orleans businessman, Liberace/a drag queen, and Cartman from South Park...