Family Guy – Something, Something, Something, Dark Side

Family Guy’s spoof on Star Wars Episode IV, Blue Harvest, was just amusing enough for their latest comedic interpretation of Star Wars Episode V, Something, Something, Something, Dark Side, to be somewhat desirable review bait. Their approach to The Empire Strikes Back, as it seems like everything else they do, is fairly simple. Each member of the Griffin family portrays a respective Star Wars character. Peter plays Han Solo, Brian plays his loyal sidekick Chewbacca, Lois plays Princess Leia, Chris plays Luke Skywalker, Stewie plays Darth Vader, and Meg plays a slug monster. The more popular amongst the remaining Family Guy characters are worked in as needed through the galactic franchise’s less notable roles.

Something, Something, Something, Dark Side starts off in much the same way that Empire does and follows the story line almost verbatim. It borrows from the predated Spaceballs joke of injecting humor into the yellow font prologue that slowly vanishes upwards into barren space. As is Family Guy’s M.O., there’s a smattering of unexpected pop culture references used for laugh values both big and small, but mostly small. The Imperial Walkers wear Crocs, X-Wings come equipped with OnStar, and the Millennium Falcon maneuvers past The Beatles’ strawberry field on their way through an asteroid field. Such references vary greatly in their degrees of humor. One that was particularly funny, however, is Luke’s time spent on Dagobah learning the ways of the force from master Yoda. It is rotated in and out with scenes of Dolph Lundgren training as Ivan Draggo as he waits to do 15 rounds of battle against Sly Stallone in Rocky IV.

If any aspect of this straight-to-DVD release deserves praise it’s the fact that they didn’t cut any corners with their animation as it looks immaculately sharp and especially so when it comes to fast paced action sequences. The level of detail seen in the Empire command ships and some of the destroyers that fly away from them is near spot on at a granular level. Detail is somewhat of an ironic thing to credit for a supposedly humorous animated parody, but it was done far too well to simply overlook.

Star Wars is one of those sagas that can be watched repeatedly without any sort of adjustment in enjoyment from one viewing to the next. Hence it’s staying power and league of fanatics with undying devotion. The question then translates to whether or not the same can be said for Family Guy’s adaptation of arguably the greatest cinematic trilogy of all time? The answer to that is a resounding no. The Star Wars element gives it some repeatability value, but the jokes deliver with little to no impact the second time around. Generally speaking, they’re mildly funny once and then not at all funny any time after that.

The extras were abundant and shockingly enough enjoyably educational. There’s a VH1-style pop up option that shoots off anecdotal fun facts while the movie plays, there’s an option to turn on commentary from the producers, writers, and directors, and there’s a short that provides some interesting information into how the movie poster was created. Interestingly, paint was favored over digital imaging in order recreate the authenticity of the original movie posters. You have to suffer through a couple of artists who think they’re much funnier than they actually are during this segment, but the insightfulness of it all wins out in the end. There’s also a short by director Dominic Polcino that explains how animations are birthed from penciled out sketches. Finally, there’s two table reads to remind you that it’s all about Seth MacFarlane in the instance that you might have forgotten. Oh, and in case you were wondering, they’re already well under way with their take on Return of the Jedi. Yay?

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