Starring Seth McFarlane , Alex Borstein, Seth Green, Mike Henry, Mila Kunis, Adam West
Written By: Alec Sulkin
Directed By: Dominic Polcino
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Buy on Amazon.com link

While TV land is suffering through a Writer’s Strike, I guess I can’t blame Fox & Family Guy releasing their Star Wars: A New Hope special on DVD without it being put into the next season DVD. I think people will still bite and purchase this, but I would have just put the special with another season DVD. It’s like paying for 1 episode basically but whatever, I’ll take as many Family Guy DVDs as I can get.

Family Guy: Blue Harvest was made to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of Star Wars and it also started the 6th season of Family Guy. The double episode/special starts out with the Griffins watching TV and then the power suddenly goes out. So Peter decides to kill time and tell the story of Star Wars. Family Guy re-enacts an abridged version of Star Wars: A New Hope with all the characters of Family Guy playing the Star Wars characters. Chris is Luke Skywalker, Peter is Han Solo, Lois is Princess Leia, Brian is Chewbecca, Stewie is Darth Vader, creepy old pedophile Herbert is Obi-Wan, and Cleveland and Quagmire are C3PO and R2D2. Meg makes a 2 second cameo but I won’t spoil the surprise on what she is. Let’s just say it’s in keeping with the show’s premise to continue to crap on her. The TV special follows the movie quite faithfully but expect all the usual pop culture references & gags you’d expect from Family Guy.

I thought Family Guy: Blue Harvest was a great homage & spoof of Star Wars, but I felt they followed the storyline a little bit too closely. I thought the crew of Family Guy should have branched off a little bit and did their own thing. Instead you get a lot of the same lines from Star Wars, where as I think they should have created all new dialogue and some new scenes. It just seems lazy to me. I know that was the whole point, was to do Star Wars scene to scene. I just think it would have been funnier if they based it off Star Wars instead of doing each scene from the movie; maybe do something similar to Spaceballs. There’s still a ton of references, cameos and scenes that made me laugh out loud though. Seeing Danny Elfman take over for John Williams was brilliant, and great to see Clark and Helen Griswold watching the rebel alliance take down the Empire.

There are two DVDs you can buy: the bare bones, cheaper DVD that has a few extras on it or a special edition DVD that includes a t-shirt and other goodies. I reviewed the bare bones one but the DVD extras were surprisingly better than I thought they would be. There’s audio commentary, a good one on one interview with Seth MacFarlane and George Lucas, a making of featurette and a featurette that shows all the Star Wars references over the years. Pretty good collection of extras for a 48 minute TV special. I believe the DVD also contains a few deleted scenes added into the movie, as well as uncensored audio!

If you’re a fan of Star Wars and Family Guy, you’ll appreciate this spoof of the “greatest sci-fi saga ever!” While there is a lot of great jokes in this special, I wish the creators branched off a little bit and didn’t follow the movie so much. I’m still looking forward to the spoof on Empire Strikes Back, which should come out this year (depending on the dumb Strike).

Features:
Bonus Digital Copy Included On Disc
Audio Commentary by Family Guy Creator Seth MacFarlane with Blue Harvest Director, Producers, Writers and Editors
A Conversation with Star Wars Creator George Lucas
Once In A Lifetime: The Making Of Blue Harvest Featurette
Animatic Version of Blue Harvest
Family Guy Star Wars Clip Show
Uncensored Audio Track

Audio:
ENGLISH: Dolby Digital 5.1 CC

Video:
Standard 1.33:1 Color

Subtitles:
English, Spanish, French

Favorite Scenes: The opening crawl, Golf announcers in the beginning, Danny Elfman getting beheaded, Peter trying to get a couch into the Millennium Falcon
Rating: NR
Running Time: 48 minutes
Extras Rating:
Overall Rating: