Will this release bring you over to the Family Guy side?
Let me start out by saying I'm not a Family Guy fan. I watched some episodes in the very beginning and it just didn't click with me. To my understanding, the episodes consist of comedy gag/bit after comedy gag/bit. I have seen the occasional clip and on their own, and some have been funny. I've just never seen enough to commit to watching full episodes.
Why am I reviewing this Family Guy Star Wars special? As you may know, I'm a big Star Wars fan. I can appreciate a good Star Wars parody. I'm not a fan that is outraged over the beloved Star Wars universe having fun poked at it (like the recent Robot Chicken episodes as well). So here is the ultimate challenge. Can the Star Wars theme bring me over to the Family Guy side? The idea of Stewie as Darth Vader, Chris as Luke, Peter as Han Solo, Lois as Leia and Brian as Chewbacca had me curious.
The episode starts out as the power goes out while the family is watching TV. With nothing else to do, they ask Peter to tell them another story like Star Wars. I haven't seen the last Family Guy Star Wars Special, Blue Harvest but I believe it began this same way. The animation and colors are crisp and clear. The ships and space scenes look great. Watching this episode on Blu-ray was really a treat. There were lots of scenes identical to Empire Strikes Back. One important question did come up, why didn't Yoda fight Vader instead of sending Luke?
Would I think this was funny? I decided to keep a tally of how many times I enjoyed this. For the random funny bits, there was four times I actually laughed out loud. There was eleven times a joke brought a smirk to my face and three times they used the extended long awkward gags. Hearing the characters swear from time to time was also an added bonus.
What about the Special Features? The Blu-ray has a full screen 4 x 3 aspect ratio with English 5.1 Dolby Surround. There is also a digital copy for your portable media player. The commentary is by Seth McFarlane, Seth Green and others. To add replay value, you have the option of Family Guy Facts-Up. These are pop up facts, some that actually have something to do with the movie. The Dark Side Of Poster Art feature (9:18) deals with Joe Vaux (painter) and Mick Cassidy (character designer) along with the painting of the cover art. There's also an Animatic Scene-to-scene with commentary by director Dominic Polcino (6:36). This consists of black and white storyboards. It's cool seeing the hand drawn images over the computer drawn storyboards.
One of the loner special features is the "Family Guy - Something, Something, Something Dark Side" table read featuring Acts 1 & 2 (49:27). We get to see a bunch of people (involved with the show) reading the script. We also get to see and hear their first reactions over the script. As you can imagine, this won't be the last we see of Family Guy taking on Star Wars. There was also a Sneak Peek of "Family Guy - Episode VI: We Have A Bad Feeling About This" Table Read (2:26). It's just weird seeing Seth McFarlane doing the voices.
In the end, I did enjoy this 'movie.' It did contain a lot of elements of the original Empire Strikes Back and there were several clever moments where it picked up on tiny details that Star Wars fans have been questioning for years. I wasn't expecting much from this but I have to give it a 4 out of 5. Even though there were moments I started getting a little distracted, I did find others pretty funny. I am looking forward to the next Family Guy/Star Wars special and maybe, just maybe, I'll check out the show once again.
