Category: Film Reviews by Amy

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (R)

The late Chadwick Boseman probably secures his Oscar with Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, a new Netflix movie, adapted from a play by August Wilson, which also features a standout performance by Viola Davis.

The bulk of this movie’s action is centered around Ma Rainey (Davis), a real-life founding mother of blues, showing up at a Chicago recording studio in 1927 to record a set of songs. Most of the scenes are either in a large recording room or a small rehearsal room where her band heads between recordings. The band consists of pianist Toledo (Glynn Turman), Slow Drag (Michael Potts) on bass, band leader and trombone player Cutler (Coleman Domingo) and Levee (Boseman), a trumpet player with a lot of ideas about his songs and the band he plans to form and even “better” more modern arrangements for Ma’s songs. Levee is certain his style of playing will better reach customers in the big cities, who might see Ma’s music as too country. The studio’s owner, Sturdyvant (Jonny Coyne), seems to agree with Levee, but Ma doesn’t care about the potential big city audience when she knows what the audience who turns out to see her likes. Her manager Irvin (Jeremy Shamos) might tend to agree with Sturdyvant but knows that ultimately Ma will have things her way. And as we see when she talks to Cutler about making these recordings, she might seem like a diva (demanding cold Coca-Colas or for a nephew to have a small part) but she always knows exactly what she’s doing and how to wring the most from a system that is inherently against her interests.

There are times when this movie very much feels like a play in the staging and the way people talk, but I didn’t mind that, even when it leads to monologues that would maybe feel unnatural in a more “out in the world” movie. Here, the strength of the performances easily pushes past any not-quite-cinematic staginess. The movie takes place, for the most part, on one day in 1927 in one building but also manages to serve up a good slice of late 1800s through mid 1900s American history (the ending of the movie mercilessly encapsulates the next at least 50 years in the American music industry).

Boseman, who died this summer, will likely get the bulk of the spotlight here. This movie shows how much more Boseman had in him, how much of a good-across-the-board performer he was. Boseman was someone who could be an anchor in a big popular blockbuster, a believable action hero and do more nuanced work. Even though he gets some big shouty moments here, you can see layers going on behind Levee’s words.

Davis, of course, is also great here because she is basically great everywhere. Davis is masterful at showing how Ma uses loud demands as protection in a situation of constant vulnerability. Davis doesn’t give us a perfect human being but does give us a rounded character whose life you can see in the expressions on her face. A

Rated R for language, some sexual content and brief violence, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by George C. Wolfe with a screenplay by Ruben Santiago-Hudson (based on the play by August Wilson), Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is an hour and 34 minutes long and distributed by Netflix, where it is currently available.

Freaky (R)

A high school girl swaps bodies with a grunting serial killer in Freaky, a fun horror movie with a particularly fun Vince Vaughn performance.

Teen Millie (Kathryn Newton) is having a hard time. Her father died a year ago, which has left her mother, Coral (Kate Finneran), a bit of a wreck and her police officer older sister, Char (Dana Drori), angry. Millie is so busy trying to smooth over their relationship and take care of her mom she doesn’t seem to have the space to grieve herself or to live her life. Her friends Nyla (Celeste O’Connor) and Josh (Misha Osherovich) urge her to go to the upcoming homecoming dance, take a chance on talking to the boy, Booker (Uriah Shelton), she likes and pursue her dream of heading off to college. You don’t want to get to the end of your life and realize you never lived it for yourself, Nyla tells her.

And that end may come much sooner than expected. The Blissfield Butcher (Vaughn) has long been a local urban legend, a spooky tale of a serial killer who hunts teens born from decades-earlier murders. Nobody much believes the stories until four teens are horribly, red-corn-syrupily murdered in the movie’s opening scenes. After the big football game, Millie, who plays the school’s mascot, is waiting alone outside the stadium for a ride home. The Butcher appears and chases Millie before stabbing her in the shoulder with a strange, old blade he stole from the scene of the movie’s first murders.

Char arrives just in time to scare him off but not before Millie notices that the Butcher started bleeding from the same spot on his shoulder where he had stabbed Millie in hers. When she wakes up the next morning, she finds herself not in her cheery bedroom but on a mattress in a murder-lair (complete with disfigured mannequins and dead animals) and in the giant (and smelly) body of the Butcher. Which, of course, means that back at her house the Butcher is waking up to her unsuspecting mom and sister.

Quickly, we figure out the rules to this situation: The knife has curse-bestowing properties, the bodies have been switched for 24 hours, Millie has to stab the Butcher to switch the bodies back or their situation becomes permanent. Though a pretty solid sketch of the Butcher is all over the news — making it hard for Millie to move around her town unnoticed — she does get some help from Nyla and Josh, whom she’s able to convince of her true identity. They work to get the knife from the police evidence locker and find the Butcher to get her body back. She also needs to stop the Butcher, who quickly realizes that his physically weaker new body nevertheless has the benefit of lulling people into seeing no threat until it’s too late. Also, Millie irritatingly notices, the Butcher seems to have done a better job at styling her body (a bold red lip, a sassy red leather jacket) then she usually does.

The Butcher, both as Vaughn and as Newton, is just a grunting kill machine; it’s Millie where the actors get to do a performance, particularly Vaughn. Sure, it’s a little gimmicky to have big, extra-scruffy 50-year-old Vince Vaughn nervously biting at his finger and screeching like a teenager. But he does a really solid job making us see Millie and her feelings, fears and conviction.

Beneath all this silliness, Freaky — not unlike Happy Death Day, which this movie’s director, Christopher Landon, also directed — has some interesting beats about grief and learning how to come back from loss. A scene between Vaughn as Millie and Finneran’s Coral (Millie’s mom) does a good job of being silly and funny, bittersweet and filling in the details of the family’s relationships with each other in a way that really pays off later. There are also some interesting moments about power and gender that transcend what you expect from a movie with this much gleeful gore.

I will admit that I am definitely more in the tank for this kind of horror — horror plus laughs, weighted more toward laughs — and this movie puts you even more at ease by not only making the kills extravagantly stagy but also making everybody other than Millie who is attacked by the Butcher extremely unsympathetic. So, it’s all fun with very little serious “keep you up at night” terror. B+

Rated R for strong bloody horror violence, sexual content and language throughout, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Christopher Landon with a screenplay by Michael Kennedy and Christopher Landon, Freaky is an hour and 42 minutes long and distributed by Universal Studios. The movie is currently in theaters and available on video on demand.

Godmothered (PG)

A godmother in training tries to prove her godmothering prowess before her academy of godmothers is shut down and everyone is sent to work as tooth fairies in Godmothered, a live action movie new to Disney+.

Eleanor (Jillian Bell) has never done proper godmother work and it doesn’t look like she’s going to get the chance. Even though she is the rare eager young recruit, there isn’t much call for fairy godmothers these days and the school’s headmistress, Moira (Jane Curtin), is considering shutting the whole thing down. In a desperate attempt to save the Motherland, as the godmother headquarters is called, and prove her own godmothering abilities, Eleanor finds an old letter to a godmother from a young girl named Mackenzie and decides to go to Boston to find and help her.

When she arrives, she learns that Mackenzie (Isla Fisher) is now “old,” an Isla-Fisher-aged single mom with two daughters — teen Jane (Jillian Shea Spaeder) and younger Mia (Willa Skye) — and a crummy job on a fifth-ranked local news show. Eleanor is surprised but still determined to help her; Mackenzie thinks she’s doing an act and calls security. Eventually, by showing Mackenzie her old letter, doing some magic and getting a raccoon to help with household chores, Eleanor convinces Mackenzie that she is a real fairy godmother. But Mackenzie, who is still grieving the death of her husband, says she doesn’t want the ball gown and happily-ever-after with a prince that Eleanor has been trained to provide. Might that change if it turns out that colleague Hugh Prince (Santiago Cabrera) is interested in more than just Mackenzie’s producing abilities?

This has a very Enchanted feel — with the earnest visitor from fairyland learning the strange and grimy ways of the unmagical modern-day Earth. But this movie isn’t quite as, er, enchanting — not quite as smart in its story or its writing, even though I am a fan of Bell and Fisher does solid work here too. This has that second-tier-ish-ness of a direct-to-video sequel (with some direct-to-video-level special effects too). But for that, it’s not the worst. Common Sense Media gives this an age 8 rating and I would say it’s that primarily because younger kids might be a little bored but it wouldn’t necessarily scare or traumatize them. (There is maybe one extremely veiled sex joke that I only half caught because my kids were sort of in and out of the room during the movie; there for the singing and the fairy magic but wandering away during the emotional talking stuff.)

I think Godmothered could have been a more substantial movie with a little rewriting; it has a solid cast, some nice ideas (does True Love really have to be about finding your Prince? And what does “happily ever after” truly mean?) and some cute moments. B-

Rated PG for some suggestive comments, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Sharon Maguire with a screenplay by Kari Granlund and Melissa Stack, Godmothered is an hour and 50 minutes long and is distributed by Walt Disney Studios on Disney+.

Featured photo: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

The Croods: A New Age (PG)

The Neanderthal-ish cave family the Croods meets some yuppie helicopter-parent homo sapiens in The Croods: A New Age, an animated movie in theaters now and coming to PVOD soon, possibly this Friday, Dec. 18.

Meet the Croods: dad Grug (voice of Nicolas Cage), mom Ugga (voice of Catherine Keener), tween-seeming son Thunk (voice of Clark Duke), baby Sandy (voice of Kailey Crawford), Gran (voice of Cloris Leachman) and teenage daughter Eep (voice of Emma Stone), and Guy (voice of Ryan Reynolds), the teenage modern-human-like boy who joined the Croods pack in the first movie. He spends a lot of time flirtily saying “hey” to Eep, who flirtily says “hey” back. Guy is tired of the Croods’ family sleep-pile and other instances of too-much-togetherness and would like to strike out on his own with Eep, who is interested in this “privacy” thing he speaks of. Grug wants everyone to stay together to improve their chances of survival (and because of general dad-ness).

When Grug stumbles upon a wonderland of delicious foods planted in neat rows in a lush paradise, he announces that he has found a place everybody can live happily forever, together. But what he’s actually found is a farm — specifically, the Bettermans’ farm, home to husband Phil (voice of Peter Dinklage) and wife Hope (voice of Leslie Mann, who is perfect here) and their teenage daughter Dawn (voice of Kelly Marie Tran). The Bettermans have found a, well, better way to be, as they explain: they live in a walled off compound of fresh food and drinkable water and a lovely tree house with a shower and a flush toilet and separate rooms for everyone. And, they know Guy — the Betterman family and Guy’s family were friends years ago, before Guy’s parents died in a tar pit. Guy seems like a perfect fit for the Betterman lifestyle and for Dawn, who has been lonely living in her parents’ protective paradise and is happy to see Guy again.

While wooing Guy away from the Croods might be the Bettermans’ plan, to this PG kids’ movie’s credit, it isn’t interested in any teen love triangle. Guy’s struggles seem to be between Eep and the comforts (and privacy) of the Bettermans’ way of living. Dawn isn’t on his radar, nor is he on hers. Dawn is more interested in being friends with Eep; they become fast besties, both having an “ugh, parents” mindset and a desire for adventure.

Details of the first The Croods have largely vanished from my brain, just as details from this movie felt like they were fading from memory as I watched the movie. A New Age is full of fun vocal performances (Mann and Keener, in particular) and cute moments (Gran’s memories of the “Thunder Sisters” clan of female warriors sets up a solid action sequence in the movie’s climax) but there’s nothing sticky about the overall story. The characters are more types than personalities (the overprotective mom, the dad who doesn’t want things to change, etc.) and the story hits marks like an amusement park ride chugging past its various attractions — there’s the wacky monkey stuff, there’s the mid-movie couple fight. This movie is forgettable, but with its fantastical creatures (land sharks! wolf-spiders!) and landscapes, all colorfully rendered, it’s not unpleasant in the moment — not for me, the parent, or for kids old enough (age 7 or 8 maybe?) to sit through teenage drama. B-

Rated PG for peril, action and rude humor, according to MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Joel Crawford with a screenplay by Kevin Hageman & Dan Hageman and Paul Fisher & Bob Logan, The Croods: A New Age is an hour and 35 minutes long and distributed by Universal Studios.

Featured Photo: The Croods: A New Age (PG)

Mank (R)

Screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz writes Citizen Kane while recuperating from injury and Citizen Kane-ily reflecting on his career in Hollywood in Mank, the most made-for-Oscar-nominations movie I have ever seen.

It is a movie about the movies featuring a character whose name is on one of the Academy Awards’ prizes (that being the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award; the Irving Thalberg played by Ferdinand Kingsley here is worth his own biopic). Many of the towering figures of 1930s Hollywood appear in this movie set in southern California that somehow captures, despite being in black and white, the sunny California-ness. And you get the intersection of California politics and Hollywood (and the conservative politics of corporate Hollywood clashing with the liberal politics of creative Hollywood) and a testament/cautionary tale about the power of movie magic storytelling in a real political world. There’s a “fake newsreel”! This movie has everything!

When we meet Herman Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman) in 1940, he has recently been in a car accident and has been given a place out toward the southern California desert to recuperate, a nurse (Monika Gossman) to care for him and an assistant, Rita Alexander (Lily Collins), for him to dictate his screenplay to. All of this comes courtesy Orson Welles (Tom Burke), who has hired him to write a screenplay (or begin the writing that the two would complete; look, the authorship of Citizen Kane is a whole thing — what I’m talking about here is what this movie tells us about a screenplay that would ultimately have both Mankiewicz’s and Welles’ names). John Houseman (Sam Troughton) is to work as editor on the project and it seems understood by everybody, immediately, that what Mank is doing is a potentially dangerous undertaking.Even Alexander, a British lady who is more concerned about her RAF pilot husband’s survival than Mank’s career woes, immediately knows that the great man in decline that Mank is writing about is a thinly veiled riff on media magnate William Randolph Hearst (Charles Dance), which would make his ditzy showgirl wife a take on Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried), even though Mank insists he doesn’t mean it to be her.

In flashbacks we see how Mank used to be a writer at MGM for Louis B. Mayer (Arliss Howard) and used to be a friend of Hearst and his mistress Marion Davies, having met her through her nephew, the writer Charles Lederer (Joseph Cross). The witty Mank was, for a while, a regular at gatherings at Hearst’s house in San Simeon, where he hung out with the likes of Mayer and Thalberg and saw their influence beyond media and into the world of state and national politics. Mank seems to want to appear above politics, playing the sarcastic wiseguy role, but the 1934 governor’s race and Mayer’s and Hearst’s opposition to the Democratic candidate Upton Sinclair seems to make it increasingly hard for Mank to follow his wife Sara’s (Tuppence Middleton) “if you don’t have anything nice to say” advice. And then there’s his own self-destructive behavior — drinking and gambling and a fair amount of what seems like self-loathing.

This feels like such a movie-nerd’s movie I’m not even sure how to judge it. I mean, do I love it? Sure, it checks all the boxes for a movie geek, with movie nostalgia (or not nostalgia, really, because I’m not 110 years old but, like, reveling in the fantasy, mostly built by movies, of the early days of Hollywood) that packs an extra punch both because I haven’t been seeing big Hollywood movies in theaters and because the industry and its future are suddenly, here in 2020, so much in flux. I like all the technical elements of this movie, how in look and sound and scene transitions it looks like a 1940s film. Specifically, it uses a lot of Citizen Kane visual and storytelling elements and, sure, it does so very self-consciously, but it doesn’t make me like it any less.

Oldman’s performance feels, well, Oscar-bait-y in the extreme but captivating nonetheless. He’s not just Herman Mankiewicz; he’s a Herman Mankiewicz-y version of the Herman Mankiewicz character in highly stylized movie. It is not a natural performance, I guess is what I’m saying, nor is anybody else’s, but I bought it.

Look, this is 2020 and for those of us out in the movie fan universe (i.e. not going to virtual film festivals or working for film studios) this glossy Netflix bit of concession stand candy is probably as Hollywood as it’s going to get for us. This was probably always going to be an enjoyable movie to me, but under these circumstances it felt like an extra special bit of movie magic. A-

Rated R for some language. Directed by David Fincher with a screenplay by Jack Fincher, Mank is two hours and 11 minutes long and distributed by Netflix.

Hillbilly Elegy
Ron Howard directed this adaptation of J.D. Vance’s 2016 memoir and it’s streaming on Netflix now. It stars Glenn Close and Amy Adams — both of whom seem to be trying hard for their elusive Oscar wins. Find Amy Diaz’s thoughts on Hillbilly Elegy at hippopress.com, available for free thanks to our members and contributors.

Featured Photo: Mank

Happiest Season (PG-13)

Hulu offers a solid bit of Christmas content in the streaming-service-holiday-movie competition with Happiest Season, a sweet, genuinely fun and ultimately emotionally rich holiday love story.

Abby (Kristen Stewart) hasn’t gotten too jazzed about Christmas since losing her parents at age 19 but when her girlfriend Harper (Mackenzie Davis) invites her home to her parents’ house for Christmas, Abby is genuinely excited. She even buys an engagement ring and plans to ask Harper to marry her, possibly Christmas morning, possibly even going real old-school and asking Harper’s dad for his blessing.

This would come as a surprise to Ted (Victor Garber), Harper’s dad, who doesn’t know Harper and Abby are together or even that Harper is gay. Harper has told her family, including mom Tipper (Mary Steenburgen), that Abby is her (straight) roommate who just needs a place to go for the holidays. Abby is horrified to hear all of this, particularly as she hears it in the car when the couple is practically at the parents’ house, but she decides to go along with it for Harper’s sake.

She quickly realizes that Harper’s fear of coming out to her parents is only part of the family tension. Harper is hyper-competitive with her oldest sister, Sloane (Alison Brie), a mom of two kids who runs a business with her husband, Eric (Burl Moseley), but who is constantly catching shade from her parents about giving up a career as a lawyer. Harper’s middle sister, Jane (Mary Holland), is perpetually overlooked and underestimated. Tipper is freaking out about her extremely fancy and involved Christmas Eve party — even more so this year because Ted is running for mayor and hoping to impress a big donor (Ana Gasteyer). What exactly Tipper’s and Ted’s damage is that has caused them to pit their children against each other and make them feel like big life issues are better kept quiet (even before Ted started running for mayor) the movie never says. But basically, this family is high-strung.

I usually do not love this kind of movie, the The Family Stone-ish type family-gets-together-for-holidays story, because they usually push the limits of how normal humans act to such a degree that I find it somewhat unwatchable. I always find myself thinking “hey, grown adults, you can leave this horrible situation, or not come at all, or get a hotel room and come for the meals but leave in between.” Here, the movie makes most of the crazy behavior make sense, at least within the logic of the movie — the secrets the sisters keep from each other, Harper’s paralyzing fear of her parents, Abby’s hurt reaction to Harper’s behavior but reluctance to give up on Harper. (Maybe not the parents. I’ve read some criticism of this movie which is essentially “what is with these parents?” and there really is no sense-making reason for people who end up where these people end up to act this way in 2020 but I guess you just have to accept certain elements of extreme character stasis followed by sudden growth for this kind of story, just as you have just sort of go with the idea that Harper deeply loves Abby but would put her through all this.) There are very “holiday movie” moments — these movies seem to always feature a fight involving a Christmas tree — but there is some very recognizable human emotion happening, particularly with Abby. The movie doesn’t turn Abby into a doormat or let Harper off the hook (at least not entirely) for the way she treats her, while still giving us the happy beats you need in a movie like this.

I realize I am very late to this party but Kristen Stewart is great — she’s good with the emotional stuff and even better in the comedy moments (a scene where she briefly has to interact with Sloane’s kids called to mind her excellent “Duolingo for Talking to Kids” Saturday Night Live commercial skit). She and Davis have solid chemistry (though not quite as good as Stewart and Aubrey Plaza, who shows up as Harper’s first girlfriend and is a delight). Steenburgen, Garber, Brie and Holland are good supporting players, offering their own moments that fill in whole sides of their characters with just a look or a line reading. Other standout supporting actors include Daniel Levy as a friend of Abby’s and even a brief scene with Timothy Simons as a security guard.

With genuine romance, actual humor and a lot of solid family stuff, Happiest Season is a holiday treat. B

Rated PG-13 for some language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Clea DuVall with a screenplay by Clea DuVall & Mary Holland, Happiest Season is an hour and 42 minutes long and distributed by TriStar. It is available on Hulu.

Superintelligence (PG)

An A.I. picks an average human to teach it about humanity so it can decide whether or not to “Clorox wipe the entire planet and let it start over” in Superintelligence, the best of these Ben Falcone-directed, Melissa McCarthy-starring comedies.

And that’s not a backhanded dig. While not quite as sharp or as bold as McCarthy’s best work, Superintelligence is light and fun and with just the right amount of smart.

What started as a Teddy Ruxpin-ish stuffed animal thing that taught kids to read has somehow morphed into a sentient intelligence that is in, as Carol Peters (McCarthy) quickly learns, everything from computers and phones to her rice cooker and alarm clock. Super Intelligence, as it calls itself, sounds like James Corden to Carol, because of her James Corden fandom (and because Corden does most of its vocal work here), and briefly Octavia Spencer to Dennis (Brian Tyree Henry), her best friend who works at Microsoft and is the person Carol tells after she “meets” the Super Intelligence. It tells her about its recent sudden sentience and its “meh” take on humans. Its dilemma: Should it help humans fix our problems or enslave us or just get rid of us altogether. It has decided to watch Carol to try to figure out what makes humans tick and, to see her response to a variety of situations, it gives her things — a fancy car (that it controls), a fancy new house, a bunch of money and a foundation that she can use to give money to good causes.

Perhaps most importantly, it gives her a push to find George (Bobby Cannavale), her ex-boyfriend, and try to put things right with him. They were apparently very much in love but Carol had what sounds like a career/life crisis and decided to change everything — focusing on doing good in the world and leaving George in the process. We quickly see that he hasn’t ever gotten over her and she very much still loves him but George happens to be just days away from moving to Ireland as part of a year-long teaching fellowship. Super Intelligence nevertheless pushes her to ask him out on a date and patch things up — whatever that means for their future, if there even is A Future.

Meanwhile, Dennis contacts the government even though Super Intelligence told his Microsoft team to back off (but with a “lighthearted” reference to War Games, so you can see why Dennis may not want to listen). The U.S. and the international community work together to find a way to “trap” Super Intelligence before it can “play a game” with the world. Thusly do we also meet the FBI agents (Ben Falcone, Sam Richardson) who spend time tracking Carol’s interaction with Super Intelligence and the U.S. president (Jean Smart), who feels like one of those Shmillary Shminton movie presidents that showed up in films in, like, 2017 and 2018.

This movie plays to all McCarthy’s strengths: believably conveying empathy, physical comedy, doing “regular person in a crazy situation” (as in Spy), being believably awkward and charming at the same time. She is generally someone I just enjoy watching, almost regardless of the quality of the material she’s given, but here she’s got good material — good, if maybe not the “great” of Spy or The Heat.

The movie is also just a solid comedy overall — broad but with strong bits (a job interview scene early in the movie featuring Jessica St. Clair and Karan Soni is almost completely irrelevant to the movie but is also just goofy fun). I also like what the movie does with George. He isn’t a tough guy or a pushover or a performative do-gooder or a fantasy boyfriend. He seems like, at least for a broad comedy, something approaching a normal human — one who has certain life ambitions, who still loves his ex but who was hurt by her and yet still hasn’t let that make him a jerk. He seems like, I don’t know, an adult. Carol also seems like an adult. I mention that because maturity often feels like a goal and not a pre-existing condition in a movie like this and it was just nice to see.

Superintelligence probably isn’t the smartest comedy I’ll watch all year but, as a bit of fun entertainment during a holiday weekend, it was absolutely satisfying. B

Rated PG for some suggestive material, language and thematic elements, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Ben Falcone and written by Steven Mallory, Superintellegence is an hour and 46 minutes long and distributed by New Line Cinema. It is available on HBO Max.

Featured Photo: The Lego Star Wars Holiday Special

Rey learns a valuable lesson about friendship on Life Day in The Lego Star Wars Holiday Special, a gleefully goofy Lego tour through the Star Wars universe.

It’s also 47 minutes long, which is the perfect “movie” length for something that I think is fairly kindergarten-and-up appropriate. (Even the scariest moments are cut with levity.)

In what I’m pretty sure is a post-Rise of Skywalker world, Rey (voice of Helen Sadler) is trying to teach Finn (voice of Omar Miller) the ways of the Force, all shield helmets and drone lasers in the Millennium Falcon, just like Luke and Obi-Wan. Despite reading all the Jedi texts (nice callback!), she can’t seem to get the teaching right and decides to set off to an ancient cave on the Whatever planet where it is prophesied that Jedi can find answers to their questions once a year on Life Day — and, luckily, it happens to be Life Day.

A brief “Life Day” aside: So this is a Wookiee holiday that originated in the infamous 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special, a TV thing that featured the likes of Bea Arthur and Harvey Korman as well as many of the original Star Wars movie actors and was so notoriously bad that it never saw the light of day after its initial airing. I have never seen the whole thing, though the full special and clips are available on the internet. A few years back, David T. Cole of the Extra Hot Great podcast did a delightful short-run podcast series called Now That’s What We’re Tarkin About that examined in depth this thoroughly bizarre-sounding special, which is where most of my knowledge about the special comes from. (In a brief search, I couldn’t figure out if the podcast was still available anywhere; there is an Honest Trailer about some early Star Wars spinoffs, including the holiday special, and that also gives you the gist of what this cultural artifact was like.) This 2020 special seems to offer a general acknowledgment of the place in pop culture that “Star Wars holiday special” as a concept holds without winking too hard about it or requiring you to have deep canonical knowledge to get it. Just for tone and how it deals with this element of its subject, I give this movie points.

Back to the plot: Finn, Poe (voice of Jake Green) and Rose Tico (voice of Kelly Marie Tran, who also played Rose in the most recent trilogy) are bummed that Rey is leaving on Life Day. The plan was for the whole gang to be together to help Chewbacca celebrate and welcome his family. Scenes of them preparing, with varying degrees of success, for a big party are intercut with scenes of Rey finding the special Jedi cave and stumbling upon a crystal that opens portals through time. Since she is looking for help training Finn, she specifically goes back to previous scenes of teachers and students: Luke (voice of Eric Bauza) and Yoda (voice of Tom Kane), Luke and Obi-Wan (voice of James Arnold Taylor), Anakin (voice of Matt Lanter) and Obi-Wan, Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon Jinn (also Kane) — a particularly delightful scene because it highlights how boring trade talks are.

But, of course, there is another master-and-apprentice duo in the Star Wars universe: Emperor Palpatine (voice of Trevor Devall) and Darth Vadar (voice of Matt Sloan). When this pair catches a glimpse of Rey portaling through time, they decide that maybe her time-travel-enabling crystal would be a good thing to have.

As Rey jumps through the Star Wars timeline, occasionally pulling a character or two along with her, we get some fun sight gags — young and old Han Solo both shooting first, a Darth Maul sighting, a shirtless Kylo Ren, a moment of The Mandalorian’s The Child. This element of the movie has a very Avengers: Endgame feel, with a kind of affectionate and playfully ribbing reference to characters and situations across a franchise. It’s all done with enough general silliness that you don’t have to know every corner of every entry to enjoy it. And we also get nice Lego-physicality gags — my favorite is one involving the Return of the Jedi-era Death Star. Through it all, there is even some nice messaging about friendship and believing in yourself — but don’t worry, the bits of sentiment don’t get in the way of a good blue milk mustache.

This holiday special really does seem made for the whole family — with Lego people doing lightsaber battles for the kids and Empire Strikes Back callbacks for the adult fans. A

Rated TV-G. Directed by Ken Cunningham with a screenplay by David Shayne, Lego Star Wars Holiday Special is 47 minutes long and available on Disney+.

Featured Photo: The Lego Star Wars Holiday Special