tek's rating: ½

Phineas and Ferb: Star Wars, on Disney Channel & Disney XD
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This is an hour-long Phineas and Ferb special that aired in July 2014, and was released on DVD in November of that year. Apparently, it was released online like a week before it aired on TV, so I feel like I should maybe list it under web specials instead of TV specials, but... I'm not going to bother with that. It's simpler for me to list it in my TV section. Anyway, I didn't see it until 2024, on Disney+. It has some pretty fun songs, so I was going to list it under musicals as well, but since I didn't do that with any of the previous Phineas & Ferb specials, I guess I won't bother with this one either. At least there's an entry there for the regular series, so I guess that will suffice.

It begins with an opening crawl, like most Star Wars movies. And... I think it's common for Star Wars parody episodes to put a show's regular characters in the roles of Star Wars characters (like Family Guy did), but here the characters from "Phineas and Ferb" are essentially playing alternative versions of themselves, just living in the Star Wars universe instead of in Danville, on Earth. The characters from "Star Wars: Episode IV" appear as themselves, and the P&F characters either interact with them or barely miss interacting with them. Which I think is a pretty cool way of doing the story. Like, we see lots of familiar scenes from the first Star Wars movie, just from different perspectives. Oh, I also wanted to say that the space scenes are frickin' gorgeously drawn.

Anyway, Phineas and Ferb themselves are moisture farmers living on Tatooine, where they are friends with Luke Skywalker. But unlike Luke, they love where they live and have no desire to ever leave. Meanwhile, Perry the Platypus is a secret agent working for the Rebellion (Major Monogram appears here as Major Hologram), and steals plans for the Death Star (which are on like a CD-ROM or something), and delivers them to Princess Leia. She puts the disc into R2-D2, along with a message she records for Obi-Wan Kenobi, and I guess Perry is supposed to accompany the droid on the escape pod, but something happens that prevents that, so he has to follow after R2 (and C-3PO) in another pod. Actually, he stows away aboard a pod with three stormtroopers: Candace, Buford, and Baljeet. Candace is determined to prove her worth to her superiors and get promoted, so she disobeys orders and follows after the droids, along with her two companions, who aren't as ambitious as she is. Mirroring her desire to "bust" her brothers in the regular series, here she wants to bust the rebels (which ends up including Phineas and Ferb).

On Tatooine, Phineas and Ferb accidentally run into R2-D2, who accidentally drops the Death Star plans in their landspeeder. When they find it, they're determined to return the disc to R2, who had gone off on his own shortly after meeting them. They keep missing him, however, and when Luke, Obi-Wan, and the droids take off in the Millennium Falcon with Han Solo and Chewbacca, Phineas and Ferb are forced to find another pilot to follow them. The one they get is Isabella, who has a grudge against Han Solo, and her ship is called the Centennial Chihuahua. Meanwhile, on the Death Star, which apparently is a much larger version of a handheld invention of Dr. Doofenshmirtz's Star Wars character, Darthenshmirtz, we meet that character and his droid assistant, Norm-3PO. Darthenshmirtz has invented a new machine called a Sith-inator, which he plans to use on himself to make himself more evil (and powerful) than he already is. Unfortunately for him, things don't go as planned. I don't want to spoil what actually does happen with the Sith-inator, but it's a neat plot twist.

And... tons of other stuff happens, which I also don't want to spoil. I think I've mentioned the roles being played by all of the show's major characters, though I should add that Vanessa is a Twi'lek singer (presumably no relation to Darthenshmirtz, who is human, but then again who knows?) I must say, I absolutely adored how the special hung lampshades on so many issues that existed in the movie, and explained some other things that the movie itself never explained. So the whole thing is just... beyond amazing. The special can best be enjoyed by Star Wars fans, whether or not they are also Phineas and Ferb fans, though it helps to be fans of both things, as I am. But while I can imagine a non-Phineas and Ferb fan enjoying it, it's hard to imagine a non-Star Wars fan getting anywhere near as much out of it as I did. For fans of both properties, it's frickin' brilliant and awesome and hilarious, in so many ways. (I will say there's a great "are we the baddies?" style scene. And another scene that put me in mind of Clerks.) I cannot overstress how much I loved this special. I wish I could give more specific examples without spoiling anything, but since I don't want to spoil anything about how the plot unfolds, I don't know what else to tell you.


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