On of the podcasts I like mentioned this movie again so I decided I would watch it again because I don’t remember much about it other than being at my Nana and Pop-Pop’s house when it aired…
The movie opens on a Wookie house. We meet Chewbacca’s family. His wife Mala, his son Lumpy and his father Itchy. I guess they guy who thought up really cool names was off that day. Itchy and Lumpy. Ok… So the family is eagerly awaiting Chewbacca’s return and apparently he is late. I say apparently because you have to infer everything from the movements. The first ten minutes take place entirely in the house with no spoken words other than the Wookie growl and no subtitles. TEN MINUTES!!! It was like really painful Wookie mime. We see a few cool things like flat panel TVs and well, ok, maybe not a few cool things but hell, they showed us flat panels in the 70′s, why didn’t we get them until recently? So we see Mala in an apron taking out the trash because all she does is stereotypical women’s work. Cook, clean, take out the trash and worry about her man.
We are treated to a live human being and our first spoken English by the local trader played by Art Carney. Yeah, that’s what I said, Art freaking Carney. He shows up with “Life Day” presents for the family and tells them not to worry because he knows that Chewbacca will be home soon. Art gives grandpa Itchy a virtual reality machine. Oh man I wish he hadn’t done that. Now we get to see the VR presentation which involves some chick dressed up as a bird undulating and singing as Grandpa Itchy becomes very, VERY aroused. Art Carney as a Wookie porn dealer… Probably the most disturbing scene I’ve seen in a long time.
Harvey Korman shows up in three roles throughout the movie. All of them make me wonder what blackmail material they had on him to make him do this movie. He’s an android Julia Child who melts down half way through the recipe. He’s a horny bar patron who drinks through a hole in the top of his head. And he’s an android instructor who melts down half way through the how-to manual. Each of the performances more forgettable than the last. And folks, forgettable in this movie means a good thing. If you had to remember any of this you’d be in therapy.
Mala makes a couple of video conference phone calls looking for news on Chewbacca. Princess Leia tells her that she hasn’t seen him and dismissed Mala because she is busy. Bitch. Luke Skywalker is busy working on his X-Wing when he gets the call. He is much nicer about it but cuts the phone call short when his engine starts venting more gas and he has to work on it. Mark Hamill had just been in his big car wreck and there was so much face makeup on him that I really thought they had brought in another actor to play him. He looked like a twelve year old girl.
The Imperial soldiers are combing the planet looking for any rebel materials. They act like dicks and look a lot less impressive than they do in the movie. They raid Lumpy’s bedroom and tear it apart. While this is going on, Lumpy (and us) watches a cartoon about the rebel forces. Nice timing, he couldn’t have waited to watch this until the Imperial troops left his freaking house? This cartoon was horrible but it was by far the best thing in the movie.
There is no doubt as to C-P30′s homosexuality, R2-D2 is made of rubber and flexes when he moves. Han Solo is actually an alien with a misshapen head and Boba-Fett (his first appearance in the Star Wars universe) shows up and helps the gang until he turns them over to Darth Vader for bounty money. Lumpy is excited as he watches and draws the suspicion of the Imperial troops. They decide they are going to stick around.
Lumpy’s Life Day present from Art Carney was a holographic music box. He watches a horrible pre-Circe de Soleil tumbling/circus act that made no sense. One of the Imperials ask what it is and Art shows him a holographic music video of Jefferson Starship. STAR SHIP, get it? A whole damn song full of glowing florescent pink and green. Oh god it’s unbearable.
At some point the Imperials are watching a propaganda channel that show how horrible life is on Tatooine. To show this, we visit the cantina bar. The cantina band is there and they are still playing the same damn song. Behind the bar, ladies and gentlemen, Beatrice Arthur! Oh yeah, when I think futuristic space opera, I think Bea Arthur. She’s hit on by a creepy Harvey Korman and she keeps turning him down. Just when it can’t get any worse, the Imperials impose a curfew and how do you close down a bar? With Bea Arthur singing a song. She sings some inane lyrics to the same cantina band melody. I wanted to open a vein.
So now we have Chewbacca and Han Solo showing up at the house. They have to kill a Stormtrooper to get there and Han has to go back to the ship because he was double parked, but Chewbacca got home in time for Life Day. They all head over to the ceremony and SURPRISE, Luke, Leia, Han and the droids are there and waiting for them. (Do they do this EVERY year at Life Day?)
The Life Day ceremony begins and we get a lot of wookies wearing red robes bowing silently around a table for five minutes. Just about the time you can’t take the silence, Princess Leia breaks out into song and you come to appreciate the previous silence. She’s so stoned she can barely stand up. Years later Carrie Fisher will admit that she doesn’t even remember filming this movie.
Finally, it ends. Mercifully, it ends. With the horrible appearances of the 70′s actors and the lame musical numbers I couldn’t take much more. It was obvious that they were trying to drag out the two hours. “Alright kid, we’ve got twenty minutes of script written, let’s look at life in a Wookie house for ten or fifteen minutes…”
The cheesy video games and early computers were alright. It was the late seventies, Coleco Head to Head baseball was still futuristic. I don’t care what George Luca$ says about the development of the Ewoks, Lumpy is an Ewok. Either Mala got some interspecies wookie-nookie or the Ewoks were originally envisioned as part of Chewbacca’s world. They also kept saying “May the Force be with you”. But in all the Jedi killed in Episodes 1, 2 and 3, did you ever see ONE wookie wielding a lightsaber? Did Chewbacca ever pick up a light saber in “Empire” or “Jedi”? Wookies don’t believe in the Force. It’s got to be something like continually telling your Jewish friends “Merry Christmas”.
Luca$ has gone on record as saying if he had time and a hammer he’d hunt down every bootleg copy and smash it. Yet, years later he produced; Jar Jar Binks. If anything in the Star Wars universe deserves to be smashed with a hammer…
It was a cheesy marketing ploy designed to cash in on the merchandising and to keep people interested until they could crank out “Empire”. 70′s TV special considered, it was still horrible. Just to cleanse the palette, I put on “Full Metal Jacket” but without the big speakers and surround sound, it just couldn’t wash the poison from my mind… Fun to watch once, torture to put your friends through later.
3 of 11 Skulls
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