Movie Review: Family Guy Presents It's a Trap!

Well, you know me, I always like to sit down at the ol' blog and write up a review of the latest straight-to-DVD animated film I just bought for my DVD library.  So let's get down to finishing up Family Guy's spoof of the Star Wars trilogy....

Family Guy presents It's a Trap!

Directed by Peter Shin

Starring the voices of Seth MacFarlane, Alex Borstein, Seth Green, Mila Kunis, Mike Henry, Dee Bradley Baker, Patrick Stewart, Michael Dorn, Carrie Fisher, Rush Limbaugh and Mary Hart.

Backstory:  So, about three years ago, to commemerate the 30th anniversary of Star Wars, Family Guy produced the special episode Blue Harvest, which was a scene-for-scene spoof of A New Hope.  The success of that led to last year's release of Something Something Something Dark Side, which was their shot-for-shot spoof of Empire Strikes Back.  Well, if the jokes in this third installment are to be believed, the creators of Family Guy figured that they were done with this and they couldn't come up with any more Star Wars jokes, but the bosses at 20th Century Fox pretty much demanded that they do a spoof of Return of the Jedi to finish off the trilogy.  And that brings us to It's a Trap!, their shot-for-shot spoof of Episode VI. 

Plot:  Do I really need to go over this?  I'm pretty sure everyone who reads this blog has watched ROTJ, and I don't need to recap.  Just imagine it shorter and with more fart jokes.  We got Chris Griffin as Luke Skywalker, Peter Griffin is Han Solo, Lois is Princess Leia.  They decided to fill out the roster this time with characters from Seth MacFarlane's other cartoons, so we've got Klaus the Goldfish from American Dad! as Admiral Ackbar and Tim the Bear from The Cleveland Show as Wicket. 

What I Liked:  Well, there's still some good jokes to be milked from this premise.  I really liked their slamming of the Special Editions by using sock puppets.  There's a completely random cameo by Pee Wee Herman, and with all the Star Trek jokes they make in Family Guy, I'm surprised it took them this long to throw in a Star Wars vs. Star Trek gag. 

What I Didn't Like:  Like a lot of Family Guy, a lot of the jokes are completely at random and just come out of nowhere.  There are just as many failed gags as there are good ones.  I agree with the creators' running gags that this whole joke is running out of steam.

Final Assessment:  If you're a fan of Family Guy and Star Wars, you'll get a few chuckles out of this, but it'll wear thin pretty quick.

3 Nibs

Bonus Features:  There's a running commentary with the show's creators, something about Star Wars Trivial Pursuit, some deleted scenes and "a very special message from Darth Stewie," which I haven't watched yet and don't know what it is.