Better Never than Late on "The Star Wars Holiday Special"

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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Better Late Than Never on the Gem of Movie "Brigsby Bear"

I finally got around to seeing the movie "Brigsby Bear" yesterday. I have wanted to see this movies since I saw the first trailer for it over a year ago. I do not watch "SNL" anymore, but when I still watched it, the one person I always enjoyed was Kyle Mooney. He appealed to my weird comedy side. He was always doing something unique and different on the show, and 99 percent of it, I loved. My favorite character of his was the 90's standup that he played on "Weekend Update". He was so sad and wanted so much attention and tried so hard.

When I heard that he was writing a movie, and that The Lonely Island, Jorma Taccone, Akiva Schafer and Andy Samberg, and Phil Lord and Chris Miller were producing it, I was intrigued. I assumed it was going to be a bizarre comedy, which it has elements of. But "Brigsby Bear" was way different than I expected. I gathered from the trailer that it may be more of a moving and heartfelt movie, but I still expected mostly comedy. For the most part though, "Brigsby Bear" is a drama. It has so much more drama and kind of bleak moments than I expected. And, I loved every single second of the movie.

First, a short synopsis of the movie. Kyle Mooney plays James. He lives in a bubble of a home with his "folks", played by Mark Hammil, who was a delight, and Jane Adams. James watches a show every night called "Brigsby Bear", and the show teaches him life lessons and is the only thing he has ever seen. James loves it so much, he runs a message board solely based on each episode. His "folks" tell him he can't go outside because of the poisonous air, so he barely leaves his room. One night he decides to go outside and sit on a rooftop, and the police come. We find out that James was abducted 25 years ago as a baby. He gets returned to his real folks, Matt Walsh and Michaela Watkins. He also has a sister, played by Ryan Simpkins. They try their best to acclimate him to the real world. Remember, James has been in a bubble his entire life. James is an outcast. He is very odd. He only likes "Brigsby Bear".

James's father does take him to the movies, to try and give him a normal life, and this starts an idea in his head. He decides that he wants to make a Brigsby movie. Things further progress when his sister takes him to a high school party and he meets some people that want to help him. He also meets a detective, played by Greg Kinnear, who has always had a dream of acting. At first, things are going well. He is making friends and his movie is plugging along. Things take a turn for the worse when he makes a real explosive for his movie and the cops find it and arrest him. He is then sent to a psychiatric ward. He soon breaks out, his family comes to accept his love for Brigsby, and they help him finish the movie. He is welcomed at the theater to a hero's welcome.

I really, really like this movie. Kyle Mooney is the only person that I would have bought playing the role of James. He can pull off the weird loner better than anyone out there right now. He is truly amazing in this movie. I could not take my eyes off screen when he was on it, which was the entire movie. And while it does have moments of comedy, this movie is more about friendship, finding yourself, being accepted, coming to terms with a terrible tragedy and the love of a family. Hell, even though Hammil and Adams characters kidnapped him, he still felt love for them. They did a truly awful thing, but they were never awful to James. They truly did love him. Even after taking a life sentence for what they did, James visits his captors in jail to have him do some voices. He holds no real ill will towards them. Seeing Walsh and Watkins and Simpkins deal with this tragedy and accept for James for who he really is was wonderful. Walsh and Watkins are mainly comic actors, but they do nothing of the comedic variety in this movie. They are parents that lost their kid, got him back and are trying to make up for lost time. Simpkins, the reluctant sister, was great too. She acted like any teenager would, but when push came to shove, she loved, and missed, the brother she never knew she had. Kinnear was excellent as the detective that helped to find James, but also had an acting bug. His turn is so good and he was so good in this role.

I truly loved this story of friendship and family. I would be lying if I didn't say that I teared up a bit near the end. I hope that this means more things will come from Kyle Mooney. He found a very unique way to tell this story. He is the only person who can tell this type of story the way he did. "Brigsby Bear" also proves to me that The Lonely Island and Lord and Miller are only attaching their names to cool and different stuff, but stuff that works, stuff that finds its niche audience. I highly recommend people seek this movie out and watch it. It takes you places you don't expect, and that was great to see. I'm very glad that I saw, and now own, "Brigsby Bear". It is a very well done movie.

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast. He is now inspired to make a movie of the television show that taught him how to be a good and compassionate person. Look out for Ty's "Saved By the Bell" film any day now.

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