Wishful Thinking

Notice:  I’m not revealing anything specific, BUT, if you are a fan of Blue Harvest, Star Wars, or Family Guy then you could very well figure out what I’m talking about.  Be forewarned.

I just watched Something, Something, Something, Dark Side and I’m very content now.  I will say that it is not as funny as Blue Harvest but it is still a must see for Star Wars fans.  There are a couple of negative points but overall these can be overlooked for the wonderful tribute it pays to the greatest sequel ever made.

Something is far from perfect and there are a few issues I have with it.  Missing from the spoof of The Empire Strikes Back are the truly witty jabs at the missteps of the original film.  It does point out some oddities but does so with much less grace than Harvest and in some cases is very blunt.  For example, in one scene Chewie breaks the 4th wall to tell you to watch the actual movie to see how weird something is (I won’t spoil what it is, especially since it’s something I’d not noticed before).  Additionally, Something spends more time on cutaway gags than its predecessor and is eerily reminiscent of the progression of the entire series from season 1 through today.  The cutaways were seemingly more frequent, were less relevant and generally just not as amusing.  Perhaps my biggest pet peeve is the focus on Stewie being gay.  Seth, we get it, Stewie is a gay baby and that’s taboo, let’s move on.  All the characters retain a little bit of their Family Guy persona in these roles but I feel Darth Vader is more Stewie than he should be.

While the faults are blindingly obvious there are several redeeming factors that for many fans will forgive all sins.  The largest by far is the dedication to good animation.  The detail in nearly every scene is unprecedented for a Seth MacFarlane series.  The effort towards making the scenes look spectacular resulted in a little less dialogue than Harvest and a more visually based experience.  Another nice touch is that the writers left out the amazingly obvious jokes (a few of which were on the commentary for Harvest) and instead took the lines in unexpected directions.  I hope that some of these jokes make into deleted scenes on the DVD but it was very good editing to leave them out of the finished product.  Finally, Something is more of an homage to Empire than a spoof.  There were minimal changes to the storyline, differing vastly from Harvest, and jokes were geared away from making fun of the core concepts of the series, such as the Force.  While this takes away from the humor aspect, the love for Star Wars that the writers have is evident and makes a big impact.

Something, Something, Something, Dark Side is a flawed beauty.  It screws up in a few places but the intention is good which is something that is really shown through in the animation and the respect paid to The Empire Strikes Back. Something, Something, Something, Dark Side will be released December 22 in the U.S. and Canada on DVD & Blu-Ray.