The Best of the Worst Christmas Specials: The Star Wars Holiday Special

Blogger's Note:  I am pleased to present our second guest post in our 12 Days of Criticismas.  This one comes from my buddy Rhett Paro, a lover of movies, particularly of the 1980's "coming of age" variety.  John Huges is his wheelhouse.  But today he shares his thoughts on possibly the worst filmed production of all time, in virtually every respect, the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special.  Enjoy!

Who doesn’t love to see Jimmy Stewart receive the answer to his existential question “What if I had never been born?” It is so overwhelming no matter how many times it is on TV, all of America gets choked up. Or who can’t relate to little Kevin, though he is such a disease, defending his home and finding his family truly is important? Or who refuses to giggle as Bill Murray is confronted by the three spirits of Christmas? These are only some of the classic Christmas cinema gems (or change the word cinema, but it should be plural) we enjoy. Now set those aside.

This Christmas I want to invite you to enjoy the best of the worst. Call your friends, pop some corn, grab a beverage, and be prepared for the best worst experience of the season. The Star Wars Holiday Special will not disappoint if your desire is to sit in stunned silence, broken only by a friend’s wise crack and laughter. Read on and you will discover why it is the worst...and the best for your holiday viewing.

Why It’s the Worst

This holiday special is so bad it is hard to know where to begin. The premise: Chewbacca must get back to his family to celebrate Life Day (yeah that’s it), and now you know as much about Life Day as when you finish the movie. How can that be? Not sure, but the fact that you have Wookies speaking in their native tongue for a straight 6 to 10 minutes UNTRANSLATED will not aid your comprehension. This happens several times!

That aside, what else is excruciating? The foreshadowing of what Star Wars would become. A great idea which is now a cash cow for someone we thought was cool. Is this really the guy who also gave the world Raiders of the Lost Ark? Do salt and fresh water flow from the same spring? It is clear to me now: Mrs. Lucas was a huge influence on the original Star Wars Trilogy. It makes sense they divorced in 1983…hmmm. The truth is George didn’t change when he wrote episodes 1, 2, and 3 - just the writer did!

Why It’s the Best

This movie has some of the best worst but very quotable lines. Who doesn’t want to hear lines like, “Look here a pocket sized aquarium, you can take it with you anywhere” or “You could say she did it by Hand…Solo. I know you know what I mean…You do know what I mean don’t you?” Classic!

Don't overlook the mockability factor. Everything from the story line to character names (Chewy’s dad is named Itchy) to hilarious late 70’s graphics, it is all good – for mocking! Make sure whoever you invite is very sarcastic and able to apply a thick coat of satire as you view. Other movies might be cliche or tired, but few present such an awesome opportunity for unbridled lampooning.

What truly makes Star Wars Holiday the best, is the time you will spend with family and friends. When else will your mom tell you to lose a few pounds? Or where else can you see your uncle Eddie have a few too many eggnog and brandies?

So get cozy with your friends and family, and though you might be the family screw up just remember, you're not responsible for what you're about to see.

From the Editor:  Here's part one of the Holiday Special for your "enjoyment."  If you dare, search YouTube for parts two through seven.

Red Tails

Red Tails, directed by Anthony Hemmingway, is the tale (word play!) of the Tuskeegee Airmen, African-American fighter pilots, who during WWII overcame the racial bigotry of the era to become one of the most celebrated air squadrons of the war.  At the time, most of the Army Air Corps brass considered African-Americans unfit both mentally and physically to be effective aviators.  It literally took an act of Congress for the Air Corps to form an all-black aviation unit.  In an effort to limit the number of acceptable applicants, the Air Corps set the standard for application so incredibly high--higher than it had for white applicants to the Air Corps--that only the university educated or those with previous flight experience were eligible.  Proving the law of unintended consequences, this uber-stringent application process was a major contributing factor to the great success of the Tuskeegee Airmen.

It's a great story and one that deserved to be told.  It just deserved a better movie to tell it.

From the opening titles, Red Tails has the feel of a big-budget TV movie.  It's clear the filmmakers (George Lucas is the executive producer) weren't interested in making a heavy, super serious war movie, a la Saving Private Ryan, and were shooting for something like a throwback to old Hollywood war films.  But the end result falls short of homage and ends up more like ho-hum.  The movie is rife with every possible war movie cliche' imaginable and every downed German plane apparently must be accompanied with a (not so) witty quip.  Example of said quips:  "Take that Mr. Hitler!"  Yikes.

As a pseudo-historian myself, it drives me nuts when filmmakers load up historical dramas with recycled characitures and story lines, more so than in non-historical type films.  Usually, the reason someone wants to make a movie about a historical event is because there is already a great story in place.  And I can guarantee that the actual real life characters involved are a whole lot more interesting than the one-dimensional retread archetypes we've all seen 100 times.  So why add all the fluff?

Example:  not to be too spoilerish, but there are at least two events in Red Tails that are clearly set up just to elicit contrived emotional pay offs down the line.  One is the all too common love story; soldier falls in love with foreign beauty and keeps her picture pinned to his cockpit console.  Guess what happens?  In the other, a downed pilot is captured and locked up, Great Escape style.  Along with his new found compatriots, he escapes, also, in a stroke of creative genius, Great Escape style.  Whether he truly gets away or not is left ambiguous, until one of his fellow escapees arrives at the Tuskeegee base to present his commanding officer with the pilots dog tags.  Both of these plot lines resolve themselves in the last few minutes of the movie at opposite ends of the emotional spectrum, and if you've seen more than three movies in your lifetime, you should see the "payoffs" a mile away.

Another example that a great many war movies fall prey to--even good ones--is the cookie cutter cast of war movie characters.  Everyone in the unit has a role to play.  There's the funny guy, the religious guy, the rebel with a heart of gold, the flawed leader (usually a drinker), the one that plays a musical instrument.  Like I said, almost all war movies are guilty of this to some degree, though the good ones are able to add a little nuance within those stereotypes.  And don't even get me started on the scar-faced lead German pilot.  Why not just have Hitler himself flying point?

Ok, enough bashing.  The positives.  The dogfighting scenes are pretty cool.  When making the original Star Wars, George Lucas used actual combat footage of WWII dogfights as a model for the X-wing/Tie-fighter battles of the Death Star attack.  In Red Tails, the dogfights are very much like high-definition versions of those old combat movies and are fun to watch.  They would be even more fun without the corny pilot-to-pilot dialog...wait, this is the positives part of the review!  Uh, yeah, the dogfights are neat.

Also, as a big fan of The Wire, it was nice to see some familiar faces on the big screen, I just wish they had better material to work with.  If it was your first time seeing them in action you wouldn't know how good Tristan Wilds, Michael B. Jordan, and Andre Royo are in The Wire as Michael Lee, Wallace, and Bubbles respectively.

I suppose I should cover at least some of the plot.  The Tuskeegee Airmen, dismissed by their white superior officers as not fit for combat, are relegated to pedestrian patrols and small convoy raids far behind the front lines, and are itching for some real action.  Finally, after much intercession by their commanding officers (Terrance Howard and Cuba Gooding Jr.) the Red Tails (so called, because the tails of their planes are painted red) are given a chance to escort bombers on raids into enemy territory.  They distinguish themselves and soon earn the respect of the white bomber crews.  There's some tension between the flawed leader (Nate Parker) and the rebel with a heart of gold (David Oyelowo), and there's the aforementioned love story and Great Escape redux episodes, but it's a pretty straight forward story.

It's not that I didn't enjoy myself (and it helped that I only paid matinee prices) and seeing the dogfights on the big screen was cool, but the potential was there for a much better movie.  Even without being a heavy handed war drama, there is a good movie in this story, but unfortunately now that this territory has already been mined we're unlikely to see that movie anytime soon.