Family Guy: It's a Trap! Blu-ray Review

During the opening Star Wars-style scroll of Family Guy: It's a Trap!, the new Star Wars parody movie focusing on the events of Return of the Jedi, the audience is warned that they should perhaps give the writers, animators and creative forces behind this project some leeway. That we should all really lower our expectations because this entire third movie-parody installment was forced, rushed and subsequently half-assed. Little did I know that this was one of Family Guy's rare un-ironic moments. Because apparently they really meant everything stated in the scroll and I'm going to heartily suggest that if you want to actually enjoy It's a Trap! you're going to have to shrink your expectations down to a microscopic level.

Yes, there were a few moments of inspired lunacy, including a great scene where Peter (as Han) forces some Imperial soldiers to do some unspeakably dark things in order to counter-balance the "cutesiness" of the overall Jedi story, but overall this saga-ender fell flat on its freakin' fuzzball. There were literally moments when I thought to myself, "Wow, that was the best joke they could think of there? That's what made it through?" And I know that Family Guy has cornered the market on random, referential humor, but some of the gags in It's a Trap! just come off as overtly shoe-horned.

All the regular Family Guy characters are back, as Peter-Han, Chris-Luke, Lois-Leia, Cleveland-R2-D2 and Quagmire-3PO are joined by Rallo and Tim the Bear from The Cleveland Show and Roger and Klaus from American Dad and unremarkably take us through, pretty much beat-by-beat, the events of Jedi. Additionally, in one of the closest moments we may ever get to an official Star Wars/Star Trek cross-over, Patrick Stewart appears for one single line as Captain Jean-Luc Picard. Also, both Conway Twitty and Ted Knight, although dead, appear as themselves. You'll just have to watch in order to understand that one.

Returning to build on its already established in-series feud between Seth MacFarlane and Seth Green are the continuous pot-shots at Seth Green, which are really only rewarding to those who've kept up with this movie-parody trilogy and still find the whole thing amusing. The bitter truth behind all of this is that Seth Green's Robot Chicken Star Wars spoofs are light years beyond the Family Guy fare. Anyways, It's a Trap! is what it is. If you're an uber-fan of Family Guy then you'll probably find redemption where I saw laziness.

The Blu-ray picture, from rotoscoped movie footage, looks fairly sweet when it comes to the space action and establishing shots of Star Destroyers. The 16:9 aspect ratio handles all the action well and the DTS-HD Audio blasts your eardrums as if you were in an actual movie theater. Assorted "extras" are in abundance as you can check out Sock Puppet Outtakes (joke re: the release of the Special Editions), "Drawing with Peter Shin," "A Very Special Message from Darth Stewie" and a commentary track featuring Seth MacFarlane, writers David A. Goodman and Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and director Peter Shin. And, as you might have guessed, the commentary track featuring MacFarlane and his retinue is, at times, more entertaining than the actual feature.

I didn't hate this final (?) Star Wars parody installment, but it did feel uninspired and toothless. There is a great Fresh Prince of Bel Air nod when our heroes get to the Ewok village however. Nothing to write home to Philadelphia about though.

• More Blu-ray Reviews
• Latest Blu-ray News, Reviews, and Videos