The Star Wars Holiday Special

As many other posters stated, I had been warned. And the legends are true! And like the Nazis, once you remove the cover to the Ark, you have to deal with the consequences. I paid 13 bucks for it, and it is a pile of crap. For the stouthearted who choose to soldier on, I have two recommendations:

1. Do not watch this alone! Like any other emotional trauma, the support of friends is crucial to survival. By the end, you will either want to climb a steeple with a rifle, or go into the garage and start the car.

2. Do not operate while unimpaired. An altered level of consciousness can cushion your psyche. I tried it straight, but within ten minutes I was forced to seek the companionship of my foamy 12 ounce friends.

At any rate, this helping of dog goo brings to light painful questions about Chewbacca and his people long ago in a galaxy far, far away. Questions probably better left unasked. Such as, despite the treetop setting, why does their dwelling place resemble a 70's ski lodge with an Astroturf floor?

Why does the local trader wear black plastic Earth glasses? How were the Wookies able to convert an ordinary cassette player into a Holograph projector? And, regarding said projector, why is the youth Lumpy (who is probably yelling "Franks and Beans!" in Wookie), so fascinated with the freakish flailings of a poor man's Cirque de Soleil? Finally, why in God's name does the patriarch of the clan, Itchy, get so aroused over a pseudo Irene Cara performing a sickening disco song and dance? It was highly disturbing.

Those are the questions that torment me. The other posters have done a far better job than myself covering the horrid sequences with Starship, Bea Arthur (shudder), Harvey Korman and Art Carney. But I must add this: I thought the animated sequence sucked. The story with decent artists probably would have been a cool comic book, but the animation and artwork was terrible. Too cartoony. Artoo physically jumping, his rigid metallic body curving about. And something about Han's head looking like it had been run over by a truck, all squashed...

Like Lot's wife, you have been warned...

A film about Chewbaccas family, and their celebration of Life Day. A film so bad, it was only aired once. George Lucas has been quoted as saying: If he had the time, he would break every existing VHS-copy of this movie - it is that bad! It contains Leia singing, Chewbaccas dad watching a fantasy movie, with erotic undertones, acrobats, an animated section and a rock concert. All your favorite characters from the first movie is here - one worse than the other.

The film isn't helped by the fact that much of the dialog is in Chewbaccas language.

There are also many logical holes in the story, like when Chewbaccas wife calls the local tradesman on the video phone, she gets to watch a long sequence of what goes on in the shop before the tradesman suddenly notices that someone is calling.

The core of the story - if you can call it a story - is that Chewbacca isn't home for Life Day in time - he is held up by fighting the Empire. This probably only takes up 5% of the movie time - most of the movie takes place in Chewbaccas home. We see what goes on with the family while they wait, with occasional brief appearances by characters from the first Star Wars movie.

This is truly a horrible movie - worth watching, just to see how bad it can be done!

I don't know whose idea this thing was, but it was a bad one. The "Star Wars Holiday Special" took place in between the two movies, and is famous amongst Star Wars fans for featuring the first appearance of Boba Fett, and completely forgotten by everyone else. Why so forgotten? Because, simply, the show is absolutely terrible.

The "special" (and I use that term as loosely as possible) is about Chewbacca's family, who await his return for the celebration of the holiday "Life Day." Far as I can gather, the holiday involves Christmas ornament-like globes and wearing red robes and being Wookies. The special is basically two hours of waiting, and along the way there are cameos by all the major stars of the original film (Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford, etc.) It's shocking they appear at all, I have to believe the mob was involved for them to show up. They don't do much, and look thoroughly ashamed of themselves. And they should be; after all, all the action is given to Art Carney (Don't ask me), who plays a trader who's friends with the, uh, Baccas. Action hero Art Carney, ladies and gentlemen.

The show has more asides than a Shakespearian play. There is no plot, there are only little goofy tidbits. None of it is very Star Warsish. Harvey Korman plays a few roles, including an alien version of Julia Childs, and a robot explaining how to set up a communication device. Bea Arthur works in the infamous Cantina, which on a tv budget looks a lot like a diner with some guys with alien masks. She gets a very lengthy musical number and so do Jefferson Starship, and others.

Why would you make a Star Wars special that had nothing to do with Star Wars? It's mostly musical numbers, third rate celebrities (Way older than Star Wars' target audience I should mention), and Wookies who can't speak English. There's a good twenty minute period where no English is spoken since it's just the three Wookies goofing off. If this is genius stuff, then so's "Freddy Got Fingered."

The important Boba Fett apperanace is also one of the few truly entertaining moments of the show; a cartoon about Luke and co. meeting Boba for the first time. It's exciting and well voiced and animated. It's also just a little doo-dad that Lumpy (Yes, when you're named Chewie you name your son Lumpy) watches on a little video screen while waiting for his dad to come home.

It's funny to watch, and painful to watch, and annoying to watch, and mind-boggling to watch. It has to be seen to be believed, but do you really even want to?

I was 14 when this thing originally aired. It galls me to this day, and here is why:

A little more than a year earlier, an awesome film with spectacular cinematic production values was released. It was called Star Wars. Not "A New Hope", not "Episode IV"...just..."Star Wars". And it blew everything else away. You can tell when certain films create a defining moment: the science-fiction film genre is neatly divided into 'before Star Wars' and 'after Star Wars'. This was something that even "2001: A Space Odyssey" couldn't do, even if it was (and still is) the pinnacle of writing and directing science-fiction for the big screen. The reason was simple: Star Wars connected profoundly with *every* kid's 'wanna be an astronaut/fireman/policeman when I grow up' youthful fancy, even if the 'kids' were thirty-somethings (or older!). Star Wars, in its pre-episodic release, was a wonderfully simple story, not the muddled-with-forward-and-backward-references, vastly more complex story the saga was to become. It is this simplicity I sometimes miss, perhaps because it reminds me of a time when my own life was less complicated.

When rumors of the 'Holiday Special' began, I recall it actually being looked upon as eagerly anticipated, at least among the people I knew at the time. This was mid-1978, probably when the actual holiday special footage was being recorded. Already the first indications of a new Star Wars film, The Empire Strikes Back, were public knowledge, so this holiday special just *had* to be built along the same production values as the films. Or so I (and a lot of others) thought. I should have known better, the special being for television and not cinema. When the Holiday Special aired, I was ready to be transported to that galaxy far, far away and be dazzled all over again...

The opening was promising, what with Han and Chewie being chased down by Imperial Star Destroyers and so on, yet even this opening teaser had an omen of doom attached, that being when Han said something like "That's the spirit, you'll be celebrating Life Day before you know it!" Han wasn't the only one beginning to get a bad feeling about this. The opening credits are when I actually started to fear the worst. These were NOT film-optical titles! They were video-overlays. The problem is, I just saw a scene obviously shot on film. And why are all these sitcom/variety show actors in the billing? Then it began to hit me: stock footage was going to represent actual Star Wars content, and the rest is going to be a nightmare version of the Carol Burnett Show. This wasn't going to be on the same planet of production values as Star Wars, let alone the same room. And I was exactly right! For the next 2 hours I watched, hoping in vain for some sort of payoff that justified the unfolding tragedy. Today, I remember only two distinct moments in the Holiday Special that got a reaction out of me: 1) I was p***ed off when the Imperial Stormtrooper broke the kid's crystal radio 2) I reasonably liked the animated bit.

After it was all over, I remember being angry. Not because I'd just been subjected to a crappy variety show with the Star Wars nameplate attached, but that this was broadcast nationwide and that a LOT of people (kids my age in particular) weren't going to be able to deal with that ineffable 'spark of magic' that made Star Wars such a delight being doused in a bucket of water. The almost-naive innocence that Luke Skywalker brought forth in all of us was gone forever, because we had just seen the magic turned into crap.

It would be another two years before Empire's release. Only then did most of the harm get undone. But not entirely. ESB is by far the best written of the five theatrical films that exist as of this writing, but with ESB began the complex story telling. And while the story in ESB was well-told, it comes with a price: Luke's actual loss-of-innocence visibly marks the point when Star Wars ceased to be a childhood delight and transcended into epic storytelling. If the Holiday Special had aired after ESB, I wouldn't have been so angry. At least our innocence would have been plausibly lost as we settled into watching a mature story, instead of rudely torn from our souls by a bunch of hack TV writers.

I've always been a big fan of star wars and I thought I knew a lot about it until my boy friend and his best friend asked me if I have ever seen the holiday special. I didn't even know one existed and I had actually seen both Ewok movies, go figure.

Well as a joke I suppose our friend gave us the movie last night for xmas and we popped it in. It is by far the most heinous piece of crap I have ever seen. I was warned it was bad but, WOW it was terrible. I lost an hour and a half of my life and really nothing happened during that time other than losing any shred of respect I may have had for George Lucas.

The effects are so bad they are hilarious and there seems to be some type of odd porn scene involving Chewbaca's father and some 70's Disco Queen. I watched most of the program with my mouth hanging wide open in utter disbelief. The rest of the time I was laughing at just how awful the whole thing really is.

I still recommend watching the film if only to say that you have. Especially if you claim to be a Star Wars geek. Just make sure you have plenty of alcohol on hand and some friends with an excellent sense of humor.