Family Guy: It’s a Trap! (2010/Fox Blu-ray)
Picture:
A- Sound: B+ Extras: C Film: B-
Family Guy: Blue Harvest (i.e. Star Wars: A New Hope) was hilarious and managed the spoof the film
wonderfully, as it was able to treat the original with respect while adding its
own charm. Next, we got Family Guy: Something, Something Dark Side
(i.e. Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back),
which was a major drop off from the first spoof, but fun nevertheless. Now on Blu-ray is the third and final (?)
installment in the Family Guy Star Wars
Trilogy with Family Guy: It’s a Trap
(i.e. Star Wars: Return of the Jedi). Overall, the direct to Blu-ray film was a
failure. The audio and animation are
amazingly well done, but the rest of the film falls flat as the jokes don’t
work and even the character casting is curious.
At this
point in the Family Guys: Star Wars
Trilogy the creators just seem bored; even the opening crawl “jokingly”
says they only did this one because they had to and the interns are
responsible. Whereas that may be a joke
in part, the feature did not prove to be all that amazing. Seth McFarlane is competing for title of
hardest working man in Hollywood
(I guess Ryan Seacrest should watch out?) as he now has three series (on which
he is very involved), on top of making his directorial film debut. The creators truly gave audiences fair
warning about the third installment with the title It’s a Trap (or the original title We Have a Bad Feeling About This) and even gave further insight
with the title crawl; but like a moron I continued on in disbelief. Outside of my undying love for anything Star Wars this installment was simply a
disaster. Having seemingly run through
all the main Family Guy characters
we start to see peripheral characters and some Cleveland Show and American
Dad characters slip into this installment.
Klaus from American Dad is
Admiral Akbar and Roger is a Death Star Worker, Rallo from The Cleveland Show is Lando’s wingman and Tim the Bear is Wicked
the Ewok. Whereas integrating Seth McFarlane’s
other creations into It’s a Trap is
an inventive idea, not a single character felt well placed. The characters from Blue Harvest almost seemed perfect and there was passion there, but
for this installment I felt the creators were just going through the
motions. The jokes were poorly executed
and the entire film felt like one huge joke about “how they didn’t want to do
this,” rather than paying homage to the classic trilogy.
The
technical features on this set are well done, regardless of how ghastly the
rest of the film was. The picture is a
beautifully crisp, clean and bright 1080p AVC Encoded, 1.78 X 1 Widescreen that
demonstrates dazzling colors and solid inky blacks. The image jumps off the screen and this is
certainly the most stunning presentation of anything Family Guy to date. The
audio is not quite as good as the video, but the 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio Track
is still well done. Apparently Seth
McFarlane (amongst others) worked very hard to adapt the original John
Williams’ Star Wars scores to fit
this fast paced feature and actually the music is one of the things that works
VERY well for this film. The feature is
dialogue heavy so most of the sound comes from the front, but the surrounds do
kick in for the action heavy sequences and for the music. The audio track, whereas not perfect is well
rounded and works.
The
extras I found to be sad. The audio
commentary is the most boring to date, as the cast and crew could not care less
to be there; in fact Seth McFarlane seems to have just rolled in (tired ask
heck) from some other gig. Little good
information is offered on the track and everyone is just plain bored. The most amusing feature on the set is Star Wars Trivial Pursuit that has the
cast plying a game of Trivial Pursuit, which is pretty funny. Other extras included are Sock Puppet Outtakes; A Special Message from
Darth Stewie; It’s a Trap Animatics; Making the Scene Featurette.
It’s a Trap! May be one of the most fitting
titles ever, as audiences are pulled in for round three; knowing full well
nothing good could come of it.
- Michael P. Dougherty II
