Star Wars Holiday Special
In 1978 when I was four years old the Star Wars Holiday Special aired on network television. I watched it then but the only thing that I ever remembered about it was Chewbacca’s kid walking on the railing when he wasn’t supposed to. Well, now that I’m thirty-one I figured that it was time to watch it again (via YouTube).
The first ten minutes of this movie are awful and I nearly gave up right then. The reason? Have you ever tried to listen to a room full of Wookies have a conversation? It’s not pleasant. It goes something like this:
Chewie’s Wife (Mala): rrrraaaagh rrrrraaagrrrarrrrarr
Chewie’s Dad (Itchy): rgggggarrrraaaaargg rrarraarg
Chewie’s Son (Lumpy): rrrga rrrrhhhaaarrrrrrr ggrgrr
For ten fucking minutes, I kid you not. By the way, those are their real names, I’m not clever enough to make them up.
We learn that Chewie’s wife wears an apron and his dad is a grouch with a cane. His son is most likely gay (not that there’s anything wrong with that) because I’ve never seen another Wookie prance around like that. He does some ballet on the porch railing (ah, my memory is sort-of correct) and then prances around some more. He whines a lot as well.
So, what’s the hubbub? Well, it seems that it’s Lifeday again and Chewie needs to get home to celebrate it with his family. The trouble is that Chewie is far from home with Han and the Empire is running around trying to round up the usual suspects.
Chewie’s dad is more interesting than all that though. For Lifeday he receives some, I dunno, virtual porn setup, seriously, from the kindly old man who runs the store. It’s similar to VR goggles, except they use some sort of coffee can instead of goggles. When Itchy’s head goes inside the coffee can there’s a woman that appears in his mind and she tells him how he’s adorable and that he should just relax and enjoy the pleasure. We don’t quite see his stiffy but we know it’s there by the way he squirms around in the chair.
After a while some stormtroopers break in and demand some identification. The kindly old storekeeper is over helping the Wookies celebrate Lifeday so he gives one of the Imperial Soldiers a virtual boombox that contains Jefferson Starship (or is it Jefferson Airplane? I’m not sure but it’s definitely one those groups because they said so in the opening credits). Anyway, yay, another lousy musical number.
About halfway during the movie it becomes animated without any warning. 3PO (Threepio?) and R-2 are very gay during this segment (not that there’s anything wrong with that) and Leia looks like a muppet from Korea. Luke gets involved in a love triangle with the robots and you can clearly hear the jealousy in 3PO’s voice when Luke asks about the well-being of R-2. Boba Fett appears and saves Luke’s life from a swamp monster. Boba calls him “friend” a lot and sounds a lot like a tough-guy from New York. He and Chewie go off to find some special serum for Luke who has gotten a mysterious sleeping virus from the “talisman.” Boba contacts Vader and tells him everything is going according to plan.
Then we’re back into the real world and Chewie’s gay kid is watching this cartoon. Then the movie goes back to animation again. Weird. When the movie comes back to the real world again the stormtroopers are still wrecking the place and one of the guards tears a stuffed animal apart. There’s lots of tough-guys in this movie.
It turns out that the kindly old man gave the kid a radio transmitter for Lifeday so the kid watches an instructional video on how to put the thing together. The guy giving the lecture in the video is some sort of android that has trouble with his power supply. This makes the android slow down and speed up at inopportune times. It’s kind of comical for about thirty seconds. Unfortunately, the scene goes on and on for about ten minutes.
Suddenly we’re on Tatooine, watching a propaganda tape that is “required viewing” for all Imperial, er, members I guess. The Mos Eisley Cantina is kickin’ and Figrin Da’n and the Modal Nodes (yes, I’m that much of a geek that I know the name of a fictious band in a fictitious universe) are still playing that insipid song - doot doot doot doot doodley-doo doodley-doo. C’mon, you know the tune. Pretty much all of the monsters that were in the Cantina in A New Hope are here. There’s a new monster though, the bar tender. Her name is Beatrice Arthur, aka Bea Arthur, Maude, the manly-women from Golden Girls. She brusquely orders people to drink up and she snubs some dude that’s into her. The guy ends up pouring the drink in his head. Not on his head or in his mouth, in his head. Things like that should be illegal but it IS Mos Eisley we’re in. He chases her around the bar and she calls him “terribly attractive,” whatever that’s supposed to mean. She busts out into song when the Empire orders everyone to return to their homes. I learned that if there is a room full of drunken aliens the best way to get them to leave is to sing to them in a slightly husky voice.
Han and Chewie suddenly show up at the house and Han throws the left-behind stormtrooper over the railing and then hands the kid over to Chewie. Yeah, that Han is a scoundrel, got to be careful of him.
It all ends with a bunch of Wookies in robes walking into a glob of light in outer space and they don’t even need to wear masks or anything.
Well, it doesn’t really end there. No, we have to hear Carrie Fisher sing us a song about peace. It made me want to shoot my face off, but you can’t please everyone. After her song we see a montage of a New Hope and then it ends.
My conclusion? Bad, but laughably so. The whole thing is just a big embarrassment to the franchise, even more so than Phantom Menace, but little kids will like it. I wouldn’t watch it again unless I was paid to but I’m glad that I got a chance to re-connect with a memory that I’ve had for a very long time.