20th Century Fox | 2009 | 54 mins. | Not rated
Since its debut in 1999, Family Guy has infused a steady diet of pop culture references throughout the series. As a result, it’s no surprise the show would take on the Star Wars, one of the most popular and parodied franchises of the last thirty years. Family Guy first took on Star Wars in its sixth season premiere, Blue Harvest (which was a fake working title used to hide the 1981–1983 production of Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi). In Harvest, Peter plays Han Solo, Lois is Princess Leia, Stewie becomes Darth Vader, Brian plays Chewbacca, and Chris is Luke Skywalker. Cleveland and Quagmire play the parts of R2-D2 and C-3PO, while Herbert is the wise Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Given the popularity of the episode, it was decided that a sequel, based on The Empire Strikes Back, was warranted. While Something, Something, Something, Dark Side was originally scheduled to air as the Family Guy seventh season finale, the episode has been given a direct to Blu-ray and DVD release instead.
As with Blue Harvest, this one follows the plot of the film closely, with some obvious tinkering for comic effect. Many of the characters reprise their roles from the first Star Wars parody, and are joined by Ernie the Giant Chicken as Boba Fett. And as any Star Wars fan knows, other than Princess Leia, there aren’t many good female roles; as a result, Meg plays a space slug. Anyway, after Star Wars’ iconic opening crawl—this one criticizes 20th Century Fox for giving all merchandising rights to George Lucas—we’re taken to planet Hoth, where Chris, as Luke, is dragged to Cookie Monster’s icy lair before hacking off the creature’s arm to escape. Rescued by Han Solo (Peter), who rides in on a Don-Don—an animal with Don Knott’s head—Luke leads the fight against the Empire’s invading force “robot camels.” Solo, Princess Leia (Lois), and Chewbacca (Brian the Dog) blast off of Hoth in The Millennium Falcon and hide out in an asteroid field, while Luke sets a course to Dagobah to meet with Yoda and embark on a training sequence spliced with footage from Dolph Lundgren’s training montage in Rocky IV. The rest of Dark Side plays out almost identically to The Empire Strikes Back, all culminating with the trip to Cloud City, Han Solo mooning us while being frozen in carbonite, and Luke facing off against Stewie’s pint-sized Darth Vader.
Something, Something has some truly funny moments, but the fact that the Star Wars franchise has been parodied countless times before, handicaps the project. It feels like a lot of the territory has been covered before; though writer Kirker Butler has managed to come up with some interesting observations. Like the fact that there are countless directions they could head when fleeing Hoth, but the rebels go right for the Imperial fleet, or the weird fact that Lando was wearing Han’s clothes at the end of the film.
Something, Something, Something, Dark Side will not appeal to everyone. Many of the jokes come very close to crossing the line of political correctness—some of the gay jokes, of which there are many, may not sit right with some—but as fans of the series know, this kind of off color humor is par for the course, and shouldn’t be shocking. Fans of Blue Harvest shouldn’t be disappointed, and will likely feel that Something, Something, Something, Dark Side is a more than worthy follow up.
Something, Something, Something, Dark Side marks Family Guy’s Blu-ray debut, and compared to cable broadcasts and previous DVD releases, this episode’s 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer presents an excellent upgrade in video quality. The outlines of characters and objects, are much tighter with the increase in resolution; which gives the image a more defined appearance. Further, black levels are deeper, and colors, even in their limited spectrum, have more presence. There are no digital anomalies, noise, macroblocking or jaggies, though I did notice some extremely slight banding in one Cloud City sunset. This could easily be source related, though, and not a product of the transfer itself.
Something, Something, Something, Dark Side is graced with a solid DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track that provides pristine sound quality and a well-balanced mix. Many of the sound effects are a little thin—explosions are puny, for instance—but the track does make the most out of the surround channels. Tie Fighters criss-cross the rear speakers, lasers zip back and forth, fireballs ripple from front to back. Most importantly, dialogue is clean, clear, and distinguishable.
English SDH, Danish, Finnish, French, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Cantonese, and Mandarin subtitles are available.
Something, Something, Something, Dark Side includes the following special features:
• Commentary by Executive Producers Seth MacFarlane, Mark Hentemann and David Goodman, Actor Seth Green, Writer Kirker Butler, and Director Dom Polcino: One of the funnier commentary tracks you’ll hear, with lots of trivia, random information seemingly out of nowhere, and a tangent about Cookie Monster.
• Family Guy Fact-Ups: A pretty neat trivia track, involving both Family Guy and Star Wars, and as you might expect, plenty of little jokes.
• The Dark Side of Poster Art (1080i, 9:18) Painter Joe Vaux and character designer Mick Cassidy lead us through the creation of Dark Side’s box art, which imitates Roger Kastel’s poster for Empire Strikes Back.
• Animatic Scene-to-Scene with Commentary by Director Dominic Polcino (1080i, 6:36) We get to see comparisons between the pencil drawn animatics for the show and the final color compositions. Polcino also discusses how they blend computer animation with the old school form.
• Family Guy – Something, Something, Something Dark Side Table Read (1080i, 49:27) A table read which features the entire production crew crammed into a fairly small room to follow the script while the voice actors run through acts 1 and 2.
• Sneak Peak of Family Guy – We Have a Bad Feeling About This Table Read (1080i, 2:26) Get a sneak peak at the final chapter of Family Guy’s Star Wars parody.
• Digital Copy of the film
[xrrgroup][xrr label=”Video:” rating=”4.0/5″ group=”s1″ ] [xrr label=”Audio:” rating=”4.0/5″ group=”s1″] [xrr label=”Extras:” rating=”2.0/5″ group=”s1″] [xrr label=”Film Value:” rating=”4.0/5″ group=”s1″] [/xrrgroup]
