As it turned out, the Family Guy team has such a vast knowledge and deep love for Star Wars that one thirty-minute episode could not contain it all, and the episode was expanded to an hour.
I would only classify myself as a moderate fan of Star Wars (certainly not as enthusiastic as the Family Guy staff), and while I can appreciate an episode of Family Guy on occasion, my affinity for the series is not so strong that I watch the show on a regular basis, and I only rarely stop to watch if I see it while flipping channels. However, I found Blue Harvest to be quite excellent, probably one of the best episodes of Family Guy I’ve ever seen (which, as I just said, isn’t very many).
The Movie
[Insert summary of Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope.]
Special Features
The special features do not contain any extraordinary or life-changing revelations; however, the features are likely well-suited to the typical viewer. Not only are the features infused with the humor of Seth MacFarlane & Co., but much of the extra material focuses on the inspiration and creative process behind the resulting blend of Star Wars and Family Guy. For example, viewers (especially those, like myself, who might be nerdy enough to find it interesting, but not quite nerdy enough to already know) might find it intriguing that the title ‘Blue Harvest’ was taken from the false name given to The Empire Strikes Back during filming so as to prevent admiring and/or obsessive fans from flooding the studio and shoot locations.
Viewers will find such factoids interspersed throughout the making-of feature, ‘Once in a Lifetime: The Making of Blue Harvest‘ and the commentary (given by a long list of the Family Guy team: Seth MacFarlane, Patrick Clark, Mike Elias, David Goodman, Joseph Lee, Dominic Polcino, Danny Smith, Alec Sulkin, and Kara Vallow), which appears as a traditional feature that can be turned on as voiceover during the episode. Much of the making-of and commentary features recount the origins of the episode, the creative process involved in the episode’s production, and the reasons for and methods of merging various aspects of the styles of Star Wars and Family Guy.
‘A Conversation with George’ is an aptly titled feature that consists of a humorous but also somewhat informative interview of George Lucas conducted by Seth MacFarlane.
Viewers can also watch the animatic version of the episode (which consists of the initial black and white sketches with corresponding audio), a series of clips that play one-after-another containing every previous allusion to Star Wars in the history of the Family Guy series, and a short promotional spot for Family Guy that is essentially a television commercial for the series.
Finally, I stumbled across a couple of very brief Easter eggs, the primary function of which is to show the viewer that the Family Guy team has already begun production of a sequel, to be titled Something, Something, Something Dark Side (a reference to a line from Blue Harvest).
Presentation
Considering the impressive quality of the movie, I was a little disappointed with the simplicity of the DVD menu. The main menu is good enough, nothing spectacular, but acceptable in its conventionality. The special features and options menus were even less impressive, though, featuring relatively brief and uneventful clips, and the scene selection menu was particularly uneventful, with not a single clip of moving video and no audio either. In keeping with this theme, the transitions were similarly un-noteworthy.
The DVD package, however, does include a digital copy of the movie, which many viewers might find useful for transferring the film to their computers and iPods.
The Movie
Okay, you’re right, I suppose I should provide a bit more a film summary than a simple aside referencing Star Wars, although it certainly doesn’t require much more than that.
Blue Harvest follows the plot of the original Star Wars remarkably closely. Unfamiliar with Blue Harvest before watching, I was expecting it to be a spoof and was pleasantly surprised with the faithful mimicry created by the Family Guy team. Chris is cast as Luke, Peter as Han, Lois as Leia, Stewie as Vader, Brian as Chewbacca, Quagmire as C-3P0, Cleveland as R2-D2, Herbert as Obi-Wan, and (in typical form) Meg is marginalized to a few-second role as the monster in the trash room.
As is also typical of Family Guy, the episode is strewn with various references to popular culture, but the writers were able to do this in such as way that it doesn’t detract from the retelling of the Star Wars saga, but, rather, simply adds the Family Guy signature to the tale.
The only staples of the Family Guy series that I found lacking were Stewie’s maniacal genius and propensity for destruction and the conventional interplay between Stewie and Brian. With Stewie playing one of the darkest characters from film history, his character was surprisingly subdued and showed no signs of the evil genius/mastermind that Stewie often plays in the series. Also, with Stewie and Brian cast as characters that have no interaction, the episode lacks the back-and-forth dialogue between the two that is a common staple of the series.
Overall
Much to my surprise, Family Guy Presents Blue Harvest is an accurate retelling of the first (or fourth, if you prefer) chapter of the classic Star Wars saga. The Family Guy team was able to maintain an admirable level of adherence to the original story while also inserting characters from their series and typical pop culture references, creating a product that is distinctly Family Guy but still an enjoyable blend of the styles of both Family Guy and Star Wars. I would certainly recommend Blue Harvest to any fan (even the casual one) of Family Guy or Star Wars. In fact, I’d probably recommend the episode to anyone who’s simply heard of Family Guy or Star Wars, which should be pretty much everyone.