Robot Chicken: Star Wars

Where Robot Chicken: Star Wars was an economic and precise 22 minutes, these extras, running at nearly three hours, are hulking and disproportionate. While there is some good material to be found, to get there you have to work your way through vast amounts of go-nowhere banter, seemingly endless footage of grown men goofing around and deleted scenes (presented either in sketchpad jottings, or pure audio) that clearly should have stayed off the screen in any form.

Part of the problem is that the Emmy-winning Robot Chicken, while a real cultural phenomenon in the US, is barely known on these shores, and without the sort of indulgent affection that comes with familiarity, such exhaustive documentation of the team's every deed, or utterance, fast outstays its welcome. Where most DVDs make do with an audio commentary played over the film in question, here we get a “video commentary”, considerably longer than Robot Chicken: Star Wars itself, in which series creators Seth Green and Matthew Senreich talk to camera about each sketch in order, which is great if you can remember each sketch in order (and in some detail), but as these are not shown, you will either keep having to interrupt the commentary and go back to the relevant part of the show for reference, or else you will end up confused. At least some of the more obscure jokes are explained for those of us not deeply enough steeped in the lore of Star Wars. Without this commentary, for example, I never would have understood the blink-or-you'll-miss-it sketch in which young Luke Skywalker is shown in a strip club called the Toshi Station.

The most informative featurettes are the ones that focus on the production design and the animation process. All the stuff with the writers and voice-artists, however, is too aimless, too long, and too self-satisfied.