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The Star Wars Holiday Special

Films

Monday, 15 December 2014

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Listen to the Stinker Madness Episode

Watch the Original CBS Bumper and Intro!

Prepare to have your childhood dreams shattered! There's a reason the Star Wars Holiday Special has been buried and left to bootlegs as the only avenue to its viewing. It's terrible. Birdemic is a better film. We kid you not.

The entire "concept" (I can't call it a story) is that Life Day is being celebrated on Kashyyk, the Wookie homeworld and Chewbacca is trying to get back to his family to spend the day with them. But that pesky Empire won't go away (even though their Death Star just go sploded) and tries to prevent the Millennium Falcon from reaching Kashyyk (or Kashook, depending on who is talking). Meanwhile at Chewbacca's house, the Empire has decreed to raid all homes and look for evidence of Rebel Alliance affiliations. When put that way it sounds like it might be ok right? Wrong.

First and foremost, this is a 2 hour film (including the commercials which ARE worth watching) and 50% or more of the dialogue is in Wookie. It gets quite old after about 5 minutes of listening to three Wookies talking to each other. Now take the Star Wars out of the whole thing and pretend that they are just people and the exact same events happen. Its painfully boring. Momma Wookie watches a Martha Stewart special. Junior Wookie plays with toys and won't take out the trash. They make calls to family and friends. Grandpa Wookie gets a masturbation machine and uses it....what? Yup, one of the holy crap moments is when Chewie's dad gets a VR machine that displays a half naked Diahann Carroll dancing seductively and singing about how much she wants him and Grandpa Wookie likey....alot. Uber-creepy.

Then there is the other 50% or so of the movie, which is just cuts of original footage from A New Hope pasted in. Han Solo's getting chased by Star Destroyers...Darth is walking down the hallway of the Death Star (that no longer exists), Han is fighting Tie Fighters and talking to Luke Skywalker (who isn't onboard).

Lastly there is the guest stars...normally I would blame them directly but it PURELY isn't their fault. I feel that their resumes speak to their talent ability and so I'm left to infer that it's just the material they had to work with (sorry Bruce Vilanch, not really your fault either). Harvey Korman makes three appearances (one as the aforementioned Martha Stewart/Julia Childs mock, one as a drunk in Mos Eisley Cantina and one as a broken robot instructor of how to fix broken robots), Art Carney as a trader who is pals with the 'Bacca fam and Bea Arthur as (it seems) the owner of the Mos Eisley Cantina. With the exception of Bea Arthur's closing time song (which is almost passable) all appearances are incredibly annoying and induce more pain (both visually and audibly) for the viewer. Each joke takes about 10 minutes to set up and deliver and are pure-groan-worthy (think that annoying kid at holiday parties that tugs on your jacket for ten minutes until you turn around and then he tells you the "See-food" joke for the 15th time).

Some other highlights: Carrie Fisher appears drunk the entire time, Jefferson Starship gives a live one-take performance with glowing dildo mics, Mark Hamill looks incredibly mannequin-esqe (which is because he just got his face put back on after his motorcycle accident), Harrison Ford mails it in pretty hard (and makes the best acting performance in the movie), and the Cirque D' Soleil show up on the chess/battleboard.

Watch at your own risk!