Star Wars: Holiday Special - 1 star out of 10

Star Wars: Holiday Special - 1 star out of 10

“Star Wars: Holiday Special” is an infamously awful television special in which all of the Star Wars characters (played by the original actors) celebrate Life Day.  Don’t get too excited: it gets much worse.  This tv special can only be viewed on YouTube (thanks to a few dedicated Star Wars fans that recorded it and posted it online decades later).  It was only aired once and was never released on video (for good reason).  Audience’s must have realized how horrific this experience would be after it opened with 9-minute sequence of Chewbacca’s father, wife, and son all communicating with a single word of dialogue, just awkward grunting noises (and no subtitles) overtop of a cheesy flute accompaniment.  Yes, this is for real.  Then they talk to Luke Skywalker for 3minutes so that we get some semblance of a story, but it is still incredibly painful to watch.  How can a film as amazing as “Star Wars”… spawn something like THIS!?!?!?  Things get worse as the special guests begin to appear, particularly Harvey Korman as a cooking show host.  My goodness, what does this have to do with Star Wars?  After a trip inside of a Kaleidoscope and the equivalent of space pornography from a galaxy far, far away, there is a song by Diahann Carroll that really have NOTHING to do with the special.  Just when you think that the story is beginning to have some consistency, enter Jefferson Starship!!!  This is about when I wanted to give up on the film but forced myself to endure every last minute for the sake of this movie review.  The most random part of this holiday special comes in the form of an animated cartoon (a la Yellow Submarine) of the Star Wars characters.  This random cartoon (that has nothing to do with the Life Day story) looks nothing like the actual characters and is probably one more way of fooling the audience into thinking that they’re watching the original Star Wars actors, when in reality they are each in the special for less than 5 minutes total.  The SINGLE redemptive moment of this special is when Bea Arthur appears as the bartender.  Her attitude is amazing and she gets to interact with all of the aliens (including the Cantina Band), but even that drags on for too long.  The film’s fate is sealed… well, it was sealed about 15 times prior to that, but it is truly sealed as the Wookiees walk through space to the Tree of Life where Princess Leia sings a song (poorly) and Chewie recounts the events of the first film.  Chewie’s thought bubble is the first thing that has to do with the Star Wars story but now it has nothing to do with the Life Day story.  There is nothing special about this tv special.  The author of What Were They Thinking?: The 100 Dumbest Events in Television History actually calls it “the worst two hours of television ever.”  In the end, I would rather suffer Darth Vadar’s death grip  than sit through another minute of this.

P.S. 5 minutes of this tv special and you’ll realize that it really CAN get worse than “Star Wars: The Clone Wars”!!!!  This is the true meaning of pain:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCNGjKnTzaQ