There may be people out there reading AZM who have no love for either “Family Guy” or Star Wars. For those three people, you will not find Family Guy: Something, Something, Something, Dark Side at all humorous. For the rest of you, this direct-to-DVD release is something of a fanboy wet dream.

To be perfectly honest, there’s nothing really new about this. You’ve seen The Empire Strikes Back so you know how this is going to turn out. You’ve seen “Family Guy” so you know the type of jokes you’re likely to get. So why bother adding this to your collection?

Because it’s fucking funny, that’s why!

The production values surpass those of the weekly show. There’s some cartoon shaded 3D action, special effects, shading on the characters. I was surprised that it wasn’t drawn in an HD 16:9 format, but you can still tell there was more money spent on the art assets of the this DVD than in the regular season. It’s also a shot-for-shot animated remake of ESB with Family Guy characters thrown in. Even the DVD menu is a Family Guy recreation of the ESB Special Edition DVD menu. You can tell that everyone who worked on creating this special are huge Star Wars fans.

The Family Guy style humor is dialed up quite a bit. Best part, there’s cursing. Okay, so that might not be a big fucking deal to some people. But as a lover of colorful metaphors, I squeed like an idiot when I head Darth Stewie say “shit.” There are also a lot of meta references to the original movie like why is Lando wearing the exact same thing Han was at the end of the film when he and Chewie fly away in the Falcon to look for Han? Part of Family Guy’s humor relies on your knowledge of American pop culture references and this special is no different. There will be at least one or two that will send you to YouTube to verify and you won’t be disappointed. But I there’s enough wackiness that doesn’t require a wikipedia search for you to enjoy.

The DVD comes with audio commentaries, a pop-up video feature, animatics, table reads for this episode and the next one which will parody Return of the Jedi, and a behind-the-scenes featurette on the painting of the DVD cover. The Blu-ray disc comes with all those goodies plus a digital copy that you can play on your computer wherever and whenever you want.

I really enjoyed the table reads. It’s fun to put faces with the voices. I just wish the camera was closer, but it’s a pretty crowded room so it makes sense. And the featurette on the painting is a lot of fun. They have a short interview with Roger Kastel, the artist who painted the original ESB poster.

There’s one thing that kind of bothered me with this whole production and since I’ve spent a good long while railing against Black Face, I should mention it here. Mort plays Lando. I suppose it kind of makes sense since there’s only one Black person in the entire Family Guy cast and Cleavland is already cast as R2D2. It’s also greatly annoyed me that Billy D Williams is the only Black guy in Lucas’s future. But Mort in Black Face bothers me a little. Clearly not enough to make me turn the thing off and toss the DVD away, but it’s there and I noticed.

So anyway, it’s damn entertaining and worth a gander or two. And if you’re a giant Star Wars fan and didn’t get it in your XTREMEMAS stocking this year, you can pick it up at the store now for $22.98 on DVD and $29.99 on Blu-ray.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 29th, 2009 at 12:19 pm and is filed under Animation, Art, Crunchy Pants, Jam Scale Reviews, Movies, Remix, Sci Fi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.