Turns out my hope was for nothing. I'm not exactly sure what happened, but this wasn't even really a Star Wars movie. For one, the opening was not the Star Wars opening, which gave me a bad feeling about how the rest would go. Like when I saw Episode I and the screen split, it soured Jar-Jar for me... granted I doubt I would have liked him anyways, but it was not the best of set-ups. So, that was my first major complaint.
Second complaint: this movie made no sense for a lot of reasons. For starters, the obvious one - this happens between episodes 2 and 3. It creates a time-line of events between those two movies. Was any of it relevant to those 2 movies? No. None of the new characters in this are mentioned in the new movies (which makes no sense considering the new character is supposed to be Anakin's Paduwan learner; they tend to stick to their masters). The other big reason the movie made no sense is the entire plot, which can be summed up very easily: Adventures in Babysitting Jabba the Hutt's Son. That should have been the name of the movie. Like 'Attack of the Clones' had very little in terms of clones attacking, Clone Wars had very little of the clone wars. The movie was, for some odd reason, the Jedi are trying to make a deal with Jabba the Hutt (why? Because he's... a powerful... gangster... yes) so they must rescue his kidnapped son, who apparently Jabba loves dearly, but apparently completely disowns before 'Return of the Jedi.' Since the Jedi are doing something that makes absolutely no sense, why not have it make less sense by pulling two of the most powerful Jedi out of the middle of an important battle just so they can take care of it. So off go Obi-Wan and Anakin (and, of course, Anakin's new pupil - one of the Olson twins in space-form) to rescue the little "Hutt-let." Fun.
The new character - I hate her. She's basically a teen-aged girl who acts like a typical teen-aged girl yet is somehow a Jedi. They keep saying "she's too young to be a paduwan," yet they also said that Luke was too old. Apparently there's a very small window of time when it's reasonable to become a Jedi. Also, she was much older than Anakin was when he himself started. Why did they make this character?
Another major complaint - there were a few really good characters introduced in the Clone Wars cartoon series: Dooku's pupil, General Grievious, a few Jedi, etc. Grievious and the cool Jedi weren't even in it, beyond being seen in the background of the opening rant (which replaced the opening scrawl). Dooku's pupil who was given a very neat, wrapped up story in the cartoon was expanded, for no real reason as she served no real purpose in this movie. Based on my last two points, I'm almost positive they made this movie with the idea of somehow cramming some more "strong female characters" into the Star Wars universe. What they ended up doing was cramming in a lame teeny-bopped female character and then somewhat weakening an already strong female character.
I'm not going to go into any more. Trust me - there's a lot to complain about.
1.5 / 5 - the animation was pretty good, and Samuel L. Jackson was actually in it (though I honestly thought he sounded the least like his character). Everything else was sub-par.