(no subject)
I recently inherited a copy of the Star Wars Holiday Special, which is apparently revered in some circles for its sheer ineptitude but despised in others for staining the Star Wars canon. I will say this for it: it makes you appreciate the subtle shadings of “The Phantom Menace.” I only watched the first forty-five minutes or so of the two-hour production, and what I can tell you is that nothing happens, and said nothing happens at great, great length.
The story is mainly about Chewbacca’s family back on the Wookiee homeworld, waiting for him to return for “Life Day.” The first twenty minutes are a listless domestic pantomime by actors in Wookiee outfits. The restless youngster with the balsa-wood X-wing runs around the house; his mother scolds him in braying Wookiee-speak, sans subtitles; the kid runs to Grandpa for protection, and Grandpa dotes on him. It’s basically “The Waltons” for furries, a soggy morass of faux suburban bliss. Eventually, the mother watches Harvey Korman perform an excruciating Julia Child parody on TV (he’s stirring with four arms instead of two!), and then a bloated Art Carney shows up to do some halfhearted vaudeville. It does briefly get interesting when the grandfather Wookiee has an onanistic interlude with a hologram of Diahann Carroll, but for the most part it’s boring beyond words.
Apparently it had an enormous budget, and before you get very far in, it becomes apparent that the producers had no idea what to do with any of that money. They had absolutely nothing to say, but they had two hours to say it in and a million dollars to say it with. If you were a particularly glib Communist or zero-population-growth advocate (and I am neither), you could pass it off as a metaphor for the failings of America’s middle class: They’re pretty well off by any objective standard, living in nice homes with big TVs, but they’re not really sure what to do with themselves, apart from glumly going through the motions of formulaic domestic melodrama.
Anyway, after watching a little of this, I have a new appreciation for the rest of the Star Wars films, and for any number of other bad movies as well. They may be clumsy and loud, but at least something happens in them. The story of Luke Skywalker and his magic powers is pretty clumsy when you put it up against actual literature, but damn, it's better than watching a bunch of hairy bipeds sit around and bleat about their feelings.
The story is mainly about Chewbacca’s family back on the Wookiee homeworld, waiting for him to return for “Life Day.” The first twenty minutes are a listless domestic pantomime by actors in Wookiee outfits. The restless youngster with the balsa-wood X-wing runs around the house; his mother scolds him in braying Wookiee-speak, sans subtitles; the kid runs to Grandpa for protection, and Grandpa dotes on him. It’s basically “The Waltons” for furries, a soggy morass of faux suburban bliss. Eventually, the mother watches Harvey Korman perform an excruciating Julia Child parody on TV (he’s stirring with four arms instead of two!), and then a bloated Art Carney shows up to do some halfhearted vaudeville. It does briefly get interesting when the grandfather Wookiee has an onanistic interlude with a hologram of Diahann Carroll, but for the most part it’s boring beyond words.
Apparently it had an enormous budget, and before you get very far in, it becomes apparent that the producers had no idea what to do with any of that money. They had absolutely nothing to say, but they had two hours to say it in and a million dollars to say it with. If you were a particularly glib Communist or zero-population-growth advocate (and I am neither), you could pass it off as a metaphor for the failings of America’s middle class: They’re pretty well off by any objective standard, living in nice homes with big TVs, but they’re not really sure what to do with themselves, apart from glumly going through the motions of formulaic domestic melodrama.
Anyway, after watching a little of this, I have a new appreciation for the rest of the Star Wars films, and for any number of other bad movies as well. They may be clumsy and loud, but at least something happens in them. The story of Luke Skywalker and his magic powers is pretty clumsy when you put it up against actual literature, but damn, it's better than watching a bunch of hairy bipeds sit around and bleat about their feelings.