67 of 71 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
BE afraid, be VERY afraid...................., November 30, 2005
This review is from: The Star Wars Holiday Special (DVD)
Let my preface my review by saying that I actually do remember watching this as a wee lad back in 1978 and loving it. Specifically, I remember that Han was trying to get Chewie home for Xmas (well, Life Day - what ever the hell that is) and that Chewie's tree-house dwelling family were "captured" by storm troopers. I also remember all the major characters being in it (except of course Governor Tarkin and Ben Kenobi who bought the farm in the movie). Call it selective memory, but I LUCKILY didn't remember anything beyond this! Seeing that I have/had found childhood memories of this special, I was curious to see how it would play almost 30 years later. Boy, was I surprised...
It starts off OK. Our heroes, Han & Chewie are in the Falcon fleeing 2 imperial star destroyers (déjà vu?). The cockpit is the cheaped out TV version and actual movie footage of the space ships are used but no big deal. At this point, I'm just amazed that Harrison Ford agreed to this! Obviously, Stardom had not hit yet. And then Boo-yah! They jump to hyper space and all is well. Then the open credits role and announces the cast and "special guests": Bea Arthur (what?), Harvey Corman (are you serious?), Art Carney (Norton in a galaxy far far away?), Dianne Carroll (who?) and the Jefferson Starship (no!!!!!!!!). At this point, I'm thinking so far so good - maybe it won't be as bad as they say it is...............WRONG.
Back from commercial break, we go to the first scene at Chewie's tree house. We are introduced to Chewie's family, wife = Mala, his cute yet annoying as hell son Lumpy (very creative name!) and lumpy's perverted grandpa Itchy (OK, heads need to roll for this!). Now begins the 15 plus minutes of pure torture - grunting wookies playing house! Just when you think it can't get any worse Lumpy The Whiney goes for an electronic gadget. Now we have to suffer through 10 minutes of Circus Solei type non-sense with jesters, jugglers and dancers. BIZARRO WORLD times 100! Note: whenever one of Chewie's family members go for an electronic gadget or gizmo, prepare to suffer. Also note: have the remote ready to fast forward through the things that are so bad, you will get nightmares if you watch them. Worth noting is the fact that after viewing this part of the show I got up and made myself a nice bourbon on the rocks. Take that for what it's worth...............
After the viewer survives what just happened, I believe we are introduced the Art Carney the Space Trader. I think he sells a nail clipper or something to a grumpy Imperial Officer. It seems "Norton" is close to Chewie's family but more importantly, plays the comic relief role in the special. He pops up a few more times in the next hour plus and frankly, he annoyed me the least out of all the Special Guests. Call me crazy, but I kind of liked Art Carney in this role! He was given crap to work with and gave 110% effort. I loved the beer gut and the bi-focals too! CLASSIC.
Next we go back to more annoying Wookie shenanigans. This time Itchy, who obviously got hit with the ugly stick, heads for an electronic gadget. NOOOO!!!!!!!! This is where it gets really interesting. Itchy attaches himself to this dream machine where your imagination runs wild. In comes the sensual Diane Carroll as what I can only describe as a call girl in space. It's borderline pornographic here. Itchy is making noises that one should not hear on Network Television! Soft core wookie porn is not my thing. I actually got a kick out this part until she started to sing a never -ending song. Time to hit the fast forward button again........................
I think at this point Chewie's family gets a video call from Princess Leia and C3p0 looking for Han & Chewie. Relatively speaking, not a horrible scene really but Carrie Fisher has a mischievous look in here eyes (i.e coked off her gord no doubt).
Next, Luke Skywalker and R2-D2 check in via video to check on Han & Chewie's progress. SHOCKING MOMENT! Mark Hamill is almost unrecognizable! I'm guessing that this is one of his first appearances after that horrific car crash. His eyes look weird and small and his nose, well rumor had it that he actually lost his nose in that accident (although never really confirmed). Very disheartening actually. He appears to be on pain killers or something too. And the make-up - it's caked on big time covering huge scars I suppose. So sad but interesting to see none the less.
OK, let's talk about Harvey Corman, funny man from the Carol Burnett show. Not funny whatsoever. In fact, every second of time he got was annoying and pointless. He gets the award for "#1 Show Wrecker" along with whoever wrote the crappy story! Save yourself and fast forward thru every scene he is in! Trust me............
I think at this point in the show, two imperial storm troopers and an imperial general come a knocking looking for rebels and what not. They start harassing the wookies and trashing the place. They even trash poor little Lumpy's room to bits (even his new toy!). For some reason the scene where the stormtrooper trashed lumpy's room and toys sticks with me to this day. This is probably where my feelings for the Empire went from dislike to hate. Kudos to the guy that played the imperial general, he did a good job portraying a bad guy. I was hoping he would order the storm troopers to shoot either Lumpy or Itchy (or both).
Finally, we get something cool. The cartoon that features our heroes and BOBA FETT. You think that Boba may be a nice guy after all but in the end, we find out what side he is really on. Pretty cool. Probably the best part of the special next to seeing Luke, Leia and Han act like idiots.
Next we go to Tatooine and the bar in Mos Eisley! SO COOL. All of the original characters are there: wolf-man dude , hammer head, the white bear thingee with one tooth, the dude that didn't like Luke, the band, the vampire guy etc etc. In comes Bea Arthur as the bartender. Real corny and stuff but when her ex-boyfriend, Harvey Corman the space alien, comes in you get the worst bit of television in the history of television. FAST FORWARD NOW! Corman leaves and you think the worst is over. Wrong again! Bea Arthur has to sing and dnace around with the alines. WHY GOD, WHY? Cut 10-15 minutes out of this scene and just have Bea offering a free last round of drinks and we are good to go.
To make a long review short, Han & Chewie show up and save the day. Han throws a storm trooper out of the tree house and all is well. Han and Chewie embrace (real big hug - very curious???) and we get on with the queer Life Day celebration. Anyway, we now have out heroes (han, leia, luke, R2, 3PO and Chewie back together again and here is when the show really shines. The whole Life Day celebration is friggin ridiculous but the best part is when Princess Leia sings the Life Day song to the theme of Star Wars. HILARIOUS & CLASSIC TV MOMENT!
In conclusion, there' so much wrong with this special that I really could go on for hours about it. It easily could have been cut down to 30 minutes (by cutting an hour plus of needless crap) and been a good little show for kids. Really, the writers should be tarred and feathered for this pathetic effort. Also, Lucas needs to take some blame here. It's his franchise - He let them use his stars, his characters, clips from his movie, theme music from his movie, sound effects from his movie etc. Without a doubt, Lucas learned his lesson after this fiasco. Oh, I forgot to mention Jefferson Starship because they suck and I fast forwarded thru that part..............
Was it worth seeing? Hell ya. At least for nostalgia purposes. Now I know why Lucas wants to find and destroy every copy of this show!
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A special that was long remembered....., November 29, 2006
This review is from: The Star Wars Holiday Special (DVD)
Why 5 stars? What were we Rotten Reviewers thinking? It seems unfair to penalize the creators of "Star Wars" for a mistake they perpetrated, but also ones that fans preserved and propagated. Yes, the "Star Wars Holiday Special" is a horrible mistake, an utter train-wreck to watch. Never officially released on video, it would have vanished into obscurity had its release occurred before the advent of home video recorders. Now ofcourse, those who've somehow gotten their hands on this "too bad for even MST3K" can provenance their copy by watching for the all-important "station identification" label. (My first copy hails from Kansas City, as revealed mid-way through the all-important animated short.) Thanks to bootlegs and sci-fi conventions, those attached to this holiday-time horror can never escape their ignominy - they have been forced to relive their worst nightmare, become the victim of their own worst holiday special. So the answer is, 0 stars for quality, five sympathy stars.
So how bad is it? It's tempting to excuse TSWHS by admitting that all holiday specials are inherently evil, and that they age poorly even when compared to sit-coms and variety shows. It's also tempting to consider how negligible TSWHS's faults would appear had SW itself not become such a legend - and comparisons would have been inevitable. Neither of those theories, however, answers the overarching question of "why" it was made. It appears that nobody knew why they were making a holiday show based on SW, and that instead of trying to find out, simply threw the same lame elements of similar celebrity specials over a threadbare Star Wars story.
The result? A bag of tricks that's utterly painful to watch. It's not like one of those character-building trials, like running a marathon for the first time, or climbing mount Everest - TSWHS is one of those debilitating experiences that makes you feel like you've shortened your life, with even the arguably good parts somehow suffused with embarrassing mistakes.
Wrap-around story - it's holiday time for Chewbacca's family, as we see in repeated and extended scenes containing nothing but Wookie grunts for dialog. Had these guys forgotten "2001"? It only came out ten years earlier! Despite the lack of dialog, we can tell what's going on when Chewbacca's father plugs into some VR porn (which beams Diahann Carrol's words of love directly into Grampa Wookie's cranium, in a scene that must be seen to be believed), or when Chewie's wookie offspring watches a holographic performance of Mummenschanz (talk about dating).
We've got a nonsensical animated short that's probably more fun today because it's a time capsule of what animated sci-fi looked like before it was taken over by Anime. (Unfortunately, it falls out in the second half of the special, so it's too late to be a time capsule for the part of the special that wasn't irreparably bad.)
We've got Art Carney as Trader Saundan - a nutty traveling merchant whose bumbling manners get him past any imperial stormtroopers, but also make him practically useless. Presaging Jar-Jar Binks by over 20 years, Carney is at one point reduced to channeling Ed Norton into his performance (an annoyed Imperial even barks ala Ralph Kramden "Will You Get On With It!!?").
We've got the wickedly great Harvey Korman who suffers by having to adapt numerous roles - a multi-limbed alien cook suggesting Julia Child; a soft-hearted bar patron who drinks through an aperture at the top of his head; an "Amorphian" who constantly runs out of energy - none of which tap into the man's comedic timing demonstrated on "Carol Burnett" or his films with Mel Brooks.
We've got Jefferson Airplane singing "Light the Sky on Fire" - it's actually a decent song, but the oversized `70's microphones meant to suggest lightsabres...unfortunately suggest something else. We've got Bea Arthur singing! And once your eardrums have forgiven you, we've got Carrie Fisher singing as well.
We've got low production values, horrible direction, bad jokes, painfully bad dialog, and (for a musical) hideous music - all of which remind us that while the legend of "Star Wars" may be timeless, it's still a product of the 1970's.
TSWHS may be unwatchable for many reasons, but there's one overarching reason for its utter badness. While SW the saga was about a brave band of freedom fighters seeking to liberate the galaxy, TSWH is about a family of Wookies who do little more than the SW-universe's equivalent of watching TV and playing video games - it's basically an unintended and unflattering parody of people sitting through inane holiday specials.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Only something this bad becomes legendary....., December 25, 2006
This review is from: The Star Wars Holiday Special (DVD)
I remember seeing this when it was on television (I think I was in the 6th grade). I was thrilled to have something Star Wars on television (this was LONG before the days that movies made it to VHS in 4 months or less like now). I was so thrilled that I did not realize just what kind of nightmare of a 'Holiday Special' it was.
So, you are wondering, why did this idiot give it 5 stars???? Well, I belive that it deserved the 5 stars from its legacy status only. It is one of the most pirated movies on EBay. George Lucas has stated that he wishes he could hunt down every black market copy and destroy them. He has also vowed that it will never see the light of day as a DVD or VHS. I hope he is wrong on that.
If you have never seen this before and can get it, watch it to join the ranks of us who know what the snicker is that people do when they hear 'The Star Wars Holiday Special' mentioned anywhere (as it was in the background of the ABC Family movie 'Chasing Chritmas'). It truly is one of the bad classics of all time. It even out does 'Santa Claus conquers the Martians'.
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