As a Star Wars fan who never actually watched the Star Wars Holiday Special until last year, I was very curious about this documentary. And it did a good job explaining a lot about how this one-time-only tv variety show came to be, why it was what it was, and its legacy in the Star Wars universe.
In case you are unfamiliar, The Star Wars Holiday Special was produced to help keep Star Wars relevant before The Empire Strikes Back came out. It was only meant to air once and be forgotten, but bootleg VHS tapes got copied and copied and copied again (which is how we know The Incredible Hulk will not air tonight). Now it’s easily available on YouTube… if you dare (spoiler alert… it’s bad).
The doc lays the groundwork for how bad it is by putting it into context. 70s tv has a lot to answer for when it comes to terrible variety specials… the doc makes the argument that the special is not uniquely terrible. It was pretty much par for the course… it just happens to have the name Star Wars and a lot of rabid fans.
The doc shows plenty of other lost-to-time bad variety shows, including a Star Wars themed song and dance number from the Donnie and Marie show (all-singing, all-dancing Stormtroopers!). They even get Donnie Osmond in a sit-down interview.
And he’s not the only interview. They don’t get Lucas or the original cast (though they do have archival interviews with them) but they do get interviews with a surprising number of people who worked on the special. I mean, as far as I know they were interviewing the actual dancers from one the segments and I’ll take their word that’s a guy from Jefferson Starship. I was pretty impressed they could even find some of these people (including a newscaster who appeared during the commercials on one of the bootleg tapes).
The doc also provides context for some of the genuinely bizarre moments in the special. When I watched it, I knew the “Whip Whip Stir” segment HAD to have some pop culture relevance lost to time. And they explained it. They covered why Bea Arthur and Art Carney were in it and not, say, someone the younger fans would know. They don’t cover every segment in the special though.
The doc does run its course and keeps on going a bit too long. It felt like they were trying to run out the clock. But it was still a fun watch if you are a hard core Star Wars fan who doesn’t already know this trivia (which I did not).
Score: 84