Film So bad it's incredible, an essential cultural artifact everyone should see.
This tv movie brings me back to the old days of terrible variety shows and hideous cabaret songs sung by old people.
Those days weren't good, and this movie is the worst of it.
The music and dance numbers are insane and seem like ironic comedy sketches, and the "comedy" seems to only exist to fill up time, and the acting and production value are just embarrassing.
You have to at least see and hear Leia's sung version of the Star Wars theme if you don't want to be masochistic and sit through the whole thing.
Film The true Revenge of the Sith!
In a late year of a decade uncomfortably close to our own, a bunch of greasy-haired TV execs did a Grand Canyon's worth of coke (cut with some prime yellow snow from the Appalachians) and received a clairvoyant vision from the future about something called a "prequel trilogy" that would mar irrevocably the so-far spotless reputation of Star Wars, the biggest and most beloved pop-cultural phenomenon of its time. Time nearing that season of jolly holly and good cheer and all that, they made a selfless sacrifice on behalf of all humanity and resolved to make the worst possible Star Wars holiday special they could, so as to make the sins of Christmas Future seem passable in comparison.
And by God, did they ever go beyond the call of duty.
The special's main focus is the family of Han Solo's flea-bitten space-monkey companion Chewie eagerly awaiting their paterfamilias' return for "Life Day", a totally not-at-all-Christmasey celebration they apparently had back in them long-ago galaxy days. Their dialogue, which constitutes a good chunk of the film, is of course in unsubtitled wookiee-ese/mandrill birthing noises. They run into some trouble with the Imperial Space Gestapo and narrowly evade capture by virtue of rebel collusion. And everyone lives happily ever after or something.
From top to bottom, the thing is slathered in '70s excess of the worst kind. From shoe-horned musical and dance performances that kinda suck to dimestore synthesizer versions of the classic Star Wars score with the occasional jinglebells and whistles added, it's on a black-hole level of suckage.
There are some things I like, though. I always secretly suspected Han Solo is really a huge seasonal softie of the Carpenters-Snuggie™-and-nog variety, and his barely concealed Life Day enthusiasm just confirms this. And thanks to Bea Arthur's borderline-touching appearance as a barmaid with a heart as big as the Death Star, I now forever think of the scummy villains of Tatooine's cantinas as a disenfranchised True Companions group of outcasts.
In the end though, what little enjoyment to be found here is owed purely to legions of dedicated internet snarks (count me among them if you truly have to). Although it's been said, many times, many ways... crappy Life Day to you.
Film Why?. Just WHY?
Quantum physics states that anything can pop out of the vacuum if one waits enough kazillion years and is compensated with its opposite to preserve conservation of energy. Sadly, this appeared much earlier than physics would have suggested and the So Cool, It's Awesome thing that would have compensated its So Bad, It's Good... f*** So Bad, It's Horrible is nowhere to be seen -I cannot believe the SWHS was produced by human beings and prefer to think instead it was a cruel joke of the Universe on us-.
Anyway, the idea was good. Its execution... well. The scene of the old wookie (don't care how is called) masturbating with a VR hairdryer must be the crowning moment of shameness -I facepalmed several times watching it-, and is followed not very far away by the final part with the wookies dressed with red tunics entering into a star, the female wookie following that cooking show, and farther away the stupid death of that poor stormtrooper who must have had a family who cared of him (yes, Rooting for the Empire. Any problem?). Most of the remainder is background noise barely soportable at best.
The crappy special effects of the SWHS do not help either -as well as, as much Used Future Star Wars is, to see so much 70s-look technology there- and as other have stated before the only redeemable part are the Boba Fett cartoon, as cheesy as the animation may be, and the canteen scene.
I'd not be surprised at all if this thing had been used for the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo. It fries neurons very fast. (PS: Damn you, I cannot remove some of the worst scenes of my mind. Where's the Brain Bleach?)