Better Never than Late on "The Star Wars Holiday Special"
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Just yesterday I saw “The Star Wars Holiday Special”. This has been a curiosity of mine for quite some time. I’ve heard about its awfulness from many different sources. I’ve heard about it from RD himself. It became a white whale for a bit due to it being tough to find. The people involved dislike it. The fans dislike it. The critics dislike it. George Lucas tried to bury this thing. This was something I wanted to see but never really thought I would have a chance. But now it’s relatively easy to find. RD sent me a copy from YouTube. The quality may not be great, but it’s watchable. I had little to no issues. But, having now seen it, I kind of wish I could go back to the time before I saw this piece of trash.
Look, I’ve been a lot better on this site lately. I am trying to stay away from being negative. But this special is truly vile. It may be the worst piece of content I’ve ever seen. I was getting visibly annoyed during the 90 minute watch. My wife asked why I was mad. My son kept calling up to me from our downstairs saying, “what’s going on up there?”. My daughter, luckily for her, didn’t see my attitude during my “Star Wars” special watch. But when I say this thing is bad, I mean it’s truly, exceptionally terrible.
The special has no through line. They try to use “Life Day”, a supposed Wookie holiday, as the impetus for this special, but it’s sparse and not really touched on until the very end. This is a sketch special, but not in a good way. RD had me watch Paul Lynde’s Halloween special in October, and while nonsensical, Halloween was up front. Life Day is a non starter here. But, we do meet Chewbacca’s family. Apparently he has a wife and kid and his dad lives with them. We never see them in visual content anymore, but they are the stars here. We also get two song breaks. One is from Diane Carroll in a very odd, mastubatory fantasy from Chewbacca’s dad. It’s very weird. The other is a Jefferson Starship song, which is kind of cool, but it’s after their “White Rabbit” heyday. There’s no more Grace Slick, which is a drag. We do get the stars, Mark Hammill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Peter Mayhew, C-3PO and R2D2 are all here and all phoning it in. Bea Arthur shows up. Her sketch is dreadful and there a seemingly endless song and dance number. Harvey Korman is in three different sketches, all progressively worse. Art Carney gives his all, but the written dialogue is awful. There’s dumbass Imperial Guards. They have a voiceover from James Earl Jones, but we don’t get any new Darth Vader stuff. It’s just a scene ripped from the movie. The stars are there physically, but definitely not mentally. There’s an odd dance/circus number that Chewbacca’s son watches. They try to shoehorn bad jokes. They have an oddly placed cartoon, which I guess true fans like, but it just confused me. I don’t know. I guess I just don’t get it.
This special is unequivocally bad. I don’t think there’s a person who genuinely likes this. If someone says they do they’re lying to you and themselves. This special made me mad because they have this great source material, yet they somehow managed to make it excruciatingly boring and pointless. I loathed this. I do not recommend anyone watch this. It’s not even bad fun. You can’t even make fun of how bad it is because it’s so terrible. There’s nothing redeemable or fun about this. I truly believe this is one of, if not the, worst piece of content that’s ever been put out there. I’d rather watch knee surgery than watch this special ever again. “The Star Wars Holiday Special” is in the Hall of Fame of bad visual content. It may be the MVP.
Ty
Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast.
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