1183. The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978)

Starring: Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford

Director: Steve Binder

Running Time: 97 mins

The Star Wars Holiday Special is an American film about Chewbacca’s family on his home planet of Kashyyyk, who begin to worry when he and Han Solo don’t return home in time to celebrate Life Day.

I’ve honestly never been so bored in my life. Taking from the brilliant premise that is Star Wars, this Holiday Special is a complete and utter embarrassment. With a whole host of tedious segments that have pretty much no bearing to Star Wars, as well as focus on main characters who we just don’t care about, this is a simply atrocious film.

That said, it does fall into the so-bad-it’s-hilarious category. Although it is an hour and a half of extreme boredom, I found solace in being able to laugh at how ridiculously random and ridiculous everything here was, and that made the watch just that little bit more bearable.

The plot, which is wafer-thin considering this is just a clip show of celebrity cameos, songs and cartoons, is pretty appalling. It mainly centres around Chewbacca’s family at home, who are stuck due to an Imperial Blockade around Kashyyyk.

Now, I’m all for the expansion of the Star Wars universe, and learning about all sorts of new cultures across the galaxy, but when we’re subjected to a series of scenes in which these wookiees play board games, talk on Skype and watch cookery shows, it’s a painfully dull watch, and not one that I would ever hope to sit through again.

This isn’t a proper movie of course, and in that we can’t expect it to be up to the same level as the actual Star Wars movies, but it still has the ability to provide some entertaining segments that maybe we couldn’t get in a conventional narratives.

Unfortunately, the various sections throughout this film are all tedious and idiotic. From a painfully slow space ballad to a weird stage play-like musical number in the Mos Eisley Cantina, it’s just embarrassing to see what they came up with, and it stands out as even more appalling when it’s badly blended in and around the background of Star Wars, which is totally inappropriate for what they wanted to do.

Finally, although you couldn’t really expect to see them much, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford are completely scarce in this movie. Apart from a bizarre ending where Fisher sings a cheesy song which is sort of to the tune of the Star Wars theme, you never get to see your favourite heroes from the movie, and have to spend all your time following a story you couldn’t care less about, and that’s why The Star Wars Holiday Special gets a 2.0 from me.