Right off the bat, it must be noted that this holiday special was not as bad as The Star Wars Holiday Special from 1978, but it certainly tried to be. At a high level: Rey leaves the Life Day party to go searching for answers, gets into a lot of shenanigans, has to fix everything she mucked up, and makes it back in time to enjoy herself and teach Finn a valuable lesson.
It’s not clear who this holiday special is supposed to be targeting. One might have assumed it would be targeted towards children since it’s a LEGO-animated holiday special on Disney+, but there are so many references to the Star Wars movies and storyline, that it almost seems impossible that this is strictly directed towards children. So if not strictly for children, then one may have thought that this might be similar to The LEGO Movie or The LEGO Batman Movie, where it’s targeted towards children, but the humor is clever enough for adults to also appreciate it, but that also isn’t exactly the case either.
Children would enjoy this special because there are a handful of funny moments that would make younger children laugh. It also comes along with a heartfelt message, as every holiday special should. Adults who are Star Wars fans would enjoy this special because of the vast number of references to previous movies that are made, almost to a fault. This holiday special relies so heavily on references to previous movies, that I wonder if children who didn’t watch the earlier movies would understand what was happening during those scenes. Usually, one or two references to something within the lore aren’t enough to de-rail children from the storyline. Unfortunately, this special relies so heavily on these references that it may actually become very confusing for children watching it to understand what was even going on.
The cherry on top of everything is that this is barely a holiday special. Life Day is referenced occasionally, but the plot does not revolve around it, and if you took all of the Life Day parts out, it would barely be any different. The Life Day bits were used as another tactic to show off other characters that they otherwise would have no reason to show off, like Lando Calrissian, Maz Kanata, and Babu Frik.
Everything within this holiday special felt very “forced,” not to mention nothing was done with the fact that everything is Lego. There’s so much that could have been played on within the Lego universe, such as having them fall to pieces or build something crazy and unusual.
Overall, if you’re bored with nothing to do, it’s not a waste of 45 minutes, but don’t go out of your way to watch it.
