It’s a Trap, the final episode in the Laugh It Up, Fuzzball: The Family Guy Trilogy, which has lovingly poked fun at the three movies in the original Star Wars trilogy, was released on Tuesday 21st December in Canada and the USA on both DVD and Blu-ray.
Beginning, as ever, with a power outage that prompts Peter Griffin to tell his version of Return of the Jedi to the rest of his family, the opening crawl is used to voice disapproval of the need for a third parody, attributing the studio’s insistence that the trilogy be completed, seemingly much to the chagrin of FG creator Seth MacFarlane. It’s anybody’s guess as to whether or not this is a calculated attempt to significantly lower viewers’ expectations as to the quality of the episode, when compared to the previous two installments. Whilst it would be fair to agree with MacFarlane’s assessment of the episode, only creating parodies of A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back would have seemed peculiar and was always likely to have fans clamouring for the third episode to complete the trilogy.
With Something, Something, Something Dark Side being released more than 2 years after the original Star Wars homage, Family Guy: Blue Harvest, It’s a Trap seemed to follow hot on the heels of the parody of The Empire Strikes Back which was released in December 2009. Although an early draft of the script was known to have been written in March 2009, this shorter lead time may be one explanation for the reduced quality of the episode. Another theory is that the source material may also not have yielded as much passion from the FG writers as did the first two episodes of the original Star Wars trilogy.
This is not to say that It’s a Trap is devoid of humorous moments, it’s just that they are thinner on the ground than its two predecessors.
Time and time again throughout the three episodes, scenes from the original movies have been recreated almost perfectly, often giving the impression of the original shot having simply been ‘cartoonified’, to great effect. Staying close to the original story, the episode opens with Darth Vader’s arrival on the Death Star, before rapidly switching to Jabba’s palace and the resulting reunion of all of the Rebels, culminating in the battle over the Sarlacc pit, with Meg Griffin once again drawing the short straw when it comes to playing the ugly monster (previously, the Dianoga, and Space slug). There’s no real deviation from the plot, so whilst Han and the crew of the Millennium Falcon head off to meet with the Rebel fleet, Luke takes a detour to visit Yoda. Moving on to Endor, the only major difference to the original movie is that instead of racing through the forest on speeder bikes, Luke and Leia chase Biker Scouts on bicycles, complete with an ET moment.
With the three storylines running in tandem, there are no real surprises when it comes to the dual assaults on the shield generator and the Death Star, save for Peter Griffin encroaching on Tarantino territory in his treatment of three Imperial technicians. Suffice to say, the shield generator is destroyed and the Death Star blown up, though not before Luke has confronted Vader and the Emperor.
It is during these scenes that Seth Green becomes the butt of many-a-joke and it’s a testament to his willingness to poke fun at himself that he is willing to be subjected to so much abuse, though anyone who saw him on Entourage will acknowledge that he came across as a bit of a douche, as Peter calls him. I think it’s fairly obvious which of those portrayals paints the most accurate picture; how can the co-creator of Robot Chicken be considered a douche? 😉 In any case, it is the Green-baiting that triggers the final battle between father and son and subsequently leads onto Vader’s redemption that is then followed by with a slightly-unexpected twist at the end…
There are some laugh-out-loud moments in It’s a Trap, and whilst it may not match up to either Blue Harvest or Something, Something, Something, Dark Side, there’s still plenty of reasons to pick this up. A little nugget that could easily be missed, are Dee Bradley Baker and Carrie Fisher both voicing characters in the episode.
Both the DVD and Blu-ray contain numerous bonus features, including commentary, animatics and outtakes as well as an opportunity to watch The Family Guy: It’s a Trap production team play Star Wars Trivial Pursuit for half-an-hour….
And to think I managed to get through the whole review without a single mention of Lois dressed as slave Leia….doh!