The movie is fine, or at least I don't remember it being horrible. And gives some background to the new characters, but I don't know if it's necessary to view, you could probably just jump into the first season.
And yes there was an animated mini series that were short episodes, but there was talking and they were awesome.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wa...2003_TV_series)
They aren't on Netflix, and you don't need to watch those to get into the series on Netflix.