Back in 1978, The Star Wars Holiday Special aired on CBS. Infamous for its bargain basement production values, baffling plot points and completely out-of-place cameo appearances (say hello to Bea Arthur), it was also notable for featuring nearly the entire cast from Star Wars (which had come out the previous summer and demolished all box office records) and, in an animated segment that was the undeniable highlight of the special, introducing the world to mysterious bounty hunter Boba Fett. But George Lucas was so appalled by the final production that he vowed it would stay in the Lucasfilm vaults until both of the suns that circle Tatooine burn out. The LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special, which borrows the title and a loose narrative framework from the infamous misfire, looks to reclaim yuletide cheer for the Star Wars universe. But just in case, very few of the original cast members return.
Set after the events of last year’s abysmal The Rise of Skywalker, LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special opens with Rey training Finn to become a Jedi (um, sure!). Meanwhile, Poe is more interested in the Life Day Celebration on Chewbacca’s wooded home world of Kashyyyk. This element of the LEGO special is a direct reference to the original special, which featured Chewbacca’s wife (!), his son Lumpy and his father Itchy. (Unnamed Wookiees appear in the special as a nod to the special.) Determined to further develop Finn’s training, Rey finds a reference in the ancient Jedi texts to a Life Day miracle and off she goes with BB-8 to uncover the secret. She heads to a planet and inside a Christmas tree-shaped temple, a magical gem that allows her to unlock time and space. She figures she can learn to be a great Jedi master by learning from other Jedi masters, so she hops into the vortex and off she goes.
What follows is pretty much what you’d expect; Rey dips into various iconic moments from the Star Wars franchise and the complications that go along with that, especially when Darth Vader follows her through the vortex and uses the magic gem for his own dark urges. And, truthfully, this section of the 45-minute-long special is pretty fun. It’s a mix-and-match greatest hits collection of your favorite Star Wars bits, infused with the irreverent LEGO humor you’ve come to expect (there are many, many jabs aimed at the Emperor’s implausible return in Rise of Skywalker). And when things start to get really wacky (including a moment where they enter the world of Disney+ breakout series The Mandalorian), it’s pretty transcendent. One particularly fun bit has Darth Vader entering into a lightsaber duel with himself in the frosty ice caverns of circa-Empire Strikes Back Hoth.
The time travel device is fun, for sure. Not only does it allow you to experience your favorite moments from Star Wars lore in a fresh new way a la Avengers: Endgame. But it also serves as a canny callback to such Christmas classics as A Christmas Carol and It’s a Wonderful Life. There’s even a moment when Yoda takes on the role of the Ghost of Christmas Present, showing Rey what she’s missing out by going on her silly, unnecessarily complicated mission. It works well and adds a nice, emotional button on the action. You could also argue that the special itself is in constant conversation with its own Ghost of Christmas Past — the original 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special. (Mercifully, this new special is free of Art Carney appearances and sequences set in a hypersexualized virtual reality netherworld.)
The animation, by Atomic Cartoons, is fun and colorful. It doesn’t have the level of detail or visual wit as the actual LEGO Movie, but it definitely has more style and pizzazz than a typical LEGO animated special or TV show. There are some moments, like when the entire trench run from Star Wars is faithfully recreated on an almost shot-for-shot basis, that will leave your jaw on the floor, and there are some lovely flourishes like when Rey opens up the wormhole, it’s visualized by a swirl of glowing LEGO bricks.
Whether or not LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special becomes a perennial Christmas special is hard to say. But for this dismal year, when good cheer is in such short supply, it certainly does the job. Put on your favorite Star Wars ugly Christmas sweater, snuggle up with your family, put a log on the fire, and put on this new special. It’s funny and zippy and puts the life back in Life Day. If there was anything that could rehab the stigma of the original Star Wars Holiday Special, this is it. May the Force be with you this Christmas.
Grade: A-
The LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special premieres Tuesday, November 17 on Disney+.