Studio: Fox Home Entertainment
Starring: Seth MacFarlane, Seth Green, Alex Borstein
Directed by: Dominic Polcino
Movie Review
I’ve never been the biggest fan of Seth MacFarlane’s Family Guy. While I’ve LOL’d quite a few times at the show, I’ve always found the show painfully repetitive in its one note joke and reference-a-minute style. That said, I love Star Wars and the occasional Family Guy episode, so I was looking forward to this hour long special dedicated to the best Star Wars flick of the bunch.
The flick kicks off in old school sitcom style: the power goes out, so Peter tells a story about The Empire Strikes Back. The comedy in Something worked for me a lot more than the TV episodes, and I think it’s because of how the jokes are spread out. When the show goes long form with Stewey Griffin: The Untold Story or Blue Harvest, there’s time for the story to develop and the jokes to be integrated within, as opposed to the half hour episode where it seems a second can’t go by without a reference or jokes being jammed in before a commercial break.
The inside Star Wars jokes will satisfy even the moderate Star Wars fan, and being that I’m not a big Star Wars connoisseur, I did enjoy the references I caught a lot. There’s a few LOL moments that had me rolling in my seat and I also dug the special guest voices from James Caan, Sherriff John Bunnell (from the Police Chase shows) and Phil LaMarr. It does follow the Empire story pretty well and does a good job of playing off Hans Solo’s machismo (brilliantly played by Peter), Princess Leia’s underlying entitlement and Luke’s shaky slef-confidence.
In the end, I dug the hour long movie as a whole. It had me laughing and thoroughly entertained which is all you can ask for in a comedy. I’ll definitely be looking forward to MacFarlane’s take on the other Star Wars flicks in the future.
Crave Factor – 7
Video
Full Frame 1.33:1 – I set my TV to “stretch” the frame since I’ve become spoiled to the widescreen. Either way, it looks okay, but the transfer is nothing to write home about. Or anyone about.
Crave Factor – 5
Audio
English 5.1 DTS-HD
Crave Factor – 5
Features
Commentary by Executive Producers Seth MacFarlane, Mark Hentemann and David A. Goodman, Writer Kirker Butler, Director Dominic Polcino and Actor Seth Green – I’m not a huge fan of more than three people on a commentary. It’s hard for peeps to focus and keep on track with what’s going on in the movie. Here it’s not too bad, both Seths are funny while the others come off a little dry. A lot of the facts brought up here is brought up in the Family Guy Fact-Ups.
Family Guy Fact-Ups – Pop Up style factoids that sometimes disappear before you’ve read them. A “lightsaber” sound effect is used every time a factoid pops up and occasionally gets annoying. Some of the factoids are “meh” but I dug the factoids that pointed out certain references to me.
The Dark Side of Poster Art Featurette – Painter Joe Vaux and character designer Mick Cassidy talk about talk about the film’s hand painted poster from its original design to the placement of characters, to its final product. Short and sweet but some of the featurette is shot in night vision “Blair Witch” style, which is a bit annoying.
Animatic Scent to Scene w/commentary by Director Dominic Polcino – This feature shows a few scenes from its animatic phase (pencil drawing) to the final product. I love stuff like this and if you did the animation process, you’ll dig this short featurette too.
“Family Guy – Something Something Something Dark Side” Table Read – The whole gang from Seth McFarlane to Seth Green to someone’s kid is here for a table read of the first two acts. Runs almost a full hour with one camera filming over 20 people in a tiny room. It’s hard to hear at times but hearing one of the voice actors get a funny line off and the whole room erupt with laughter was pretty cool to see.
Sneak Peek of Family Guy – Episode VI: We Have a Bad Feeling About This Table Read – Running a couple minutes long, we get another table read, this time with Peter being unfrozen from the carbonite and escaping from Jabba the Hut.
Crave Factor – 8
Conclusion & Final Thoughts
In the end, your kids, nephews and nieces or neighborhood kids will enjoy the flick. And really, that’s all that matters. The Blu-ray is stocked with goodies which will keep the little rugrats entertained beyond the movie.
