Genre Animation

Family Guy Presents: Something, Something, Something, Dark Side (2009)

Item: Family Guy Presents: Something, Something, Something, Dark Side
Rating: 3.0
Author: Ross McLaren

★★★ — Family Guy Presents: Something, Something, Something, Dark Side (2009)

By 2009, the Family Guy franchise had already demonstrated that its audience had more than enough appetite for extended Star Wars parody. Blue Harvest, the show's feature-length spoof of A New Hope, had pulled in solid numbers when it aired on Fox in 2007, and so a follow-up was never really in much doubt. Family Guy Presents: Something, Something, Something, Dark Side arrived two years later, produced under the same banner of 20th Century Fox Television and Seth MacFarlane's Fuzzy Door Productions, and broadcast as a TV movie event. The premise is cheerfully simple: another power cut at the Griffin household prompts Peter to retell the story of The Empire Strikes Back, giving the show's writers licence to work their way through one of the most beloved science fiction films ever made, set piece by set piece, from the ice plains of Hoth to the corridors of Cloud City. It is a format that had already proved itself, if not exactly a formula without its risks.

The directing duties were shared across Dominic Polcino, Peter Shin and James Purdum, with Polcino having previously helmed the first instalment. That continuity behind the camera gives the production a consistent visual grammar, even if the challenge of staging action on an Empire-sized canvas pushes the animation to its limits. MacFarlane, as ever, is the engine running the whole thing. He voices Peter Griffin, Stewie, Quagmire and several other characters, which means he is, in a very real sense, playing multiple sides of the same conversation. Alongside him, Alex Borstein, Seth Green and Mila Kunis reprise their regular roles, slotting the Family Guy ensemble into the iconic character slots of the Skywalker saga. H. Jon Benjamin also appears in the cast, adding another familiar voice to the mix. Together they are a polished but unremarkable ensemble in terms of raw dramatic range, though that is beside the point here: the comedy depends less on performance nuance and more on timing, irreverence and the sheer willingness to undercut a sacred text at every available opportunity.

It is worth noting, for those coming to this cold, that Something, Something, Something, Dark Side sits as the middle chapter of a trilogy of Family Guy Star Wars specials. The series had begun with the A New Hope spoof and would conclude with It's a Trap!, making this very much a middle-chapter effort in more ways than one. Whether that structural position helps or hinders it is, of course, rather the point.

Something, Something, Dark Side, Family Guy’s parody of The Empire Strikes Back, is more of the same chaotic, reference-heavy madness as Blue Harvest, and if you liked the first one, you’ll find things to enjoy here. The gang returns with Peter still playing Han (sort of), Stewie fully embracing his Vader complex, and Brian doing a sleepy, unimpressed Yoda impression from the comfort of a swamp-shaped recliner. There are some genuinely funny moments. It’s ambitious in scope, covering most of Empire’s major segments, from Hoth to Cloud City to the big reveal. You can feel the strain of padding out a feature-length parody with a formula that works better in five-minute bursts. The cutaways are still hit-or-miss: some land hard, others fall flat or feel recycled. And while the animation has improved slightly since Blue Harvest, it’s still awkward when trying to match the scale and tone of the original film. Look, it’s not great cinema, and it doesn’t come close to matching the emotional weight or storytelling of Empire. But as a silly, irreverent fan tribute, it’s entertaining in doses. Same energy, same flaws. A fun watch if you’re rewatching the trilogy and need a laugh, but don’t expect anything deeper than a fart joke in hyperspace.

I'll add that for me, the thing that lingers is less any individual gag and more the sense of a show testing the edges of its own format. Five seasons of cutaway humour is one thing; stretching it to cover Empire's full running arc is genuinely another kind of problem. The moments that work tend to be the ones where the writers stop trying to match the original and just lean into the absurdity on its own terms. When it does that, it earns its laughs. When it reaches for scale it can't quite pull off, you feel it in the room. Still, if you've already got the trilogy queued up, you could do worse than having this on between films. Just maybe don't go in expecting the carbon freezing scene to hit you the same way twice.

Rating: ★★★ | Year: 2009 | Watched: 2025-09-11

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Trailer

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