Family Guy: It's a Trap! review (Blu-ray) ★★★

Another year, another blackout at the Griffins' house, another Star Wars parody. "We're about to do Jedi, aren't we," sighs Stewie when the lights go out. "Let's just get through this," replies Peter.

After the requisite opening crawl, with its requisite digs at Fox, we get into the story proper – which is, as you may have guessed by now, a parody of Return of The Jedi. Luke Skywalker (Chris) and Princess Leia (Lois) must travel to Tatooine to free Han Solo (Peter) by infiltrating the stronghold of Jabba the Hutt (Joe). Once reunited, our rebel heroes team up with a tribe of Ewoks to combat the Imperial forces on the forest moon of Endor.

Meanwhile, the evil Emperor (Carter Pewterschmidt) and Darth Vader (Stewie) conspire to turn Luke to the dark side, and young Skywalker is determined to rekindle the spirit of the Jedi within his father. Furtner meanwhile, the Rebel forces gather to attack the seemingly defenseless and incomplete second Death Star in a battle that will determine the fate of the galaxy.

As a pretty major fan of the works of Seth MacFarlane (hey, I've even had lunch with the guy), I was a little disappointed by this third part of the Family Guy Star Wars Trilogy. It does have a feel of we're-only-doing-this-because-Fox-forced-us-to about it (and they  even claim as much – jokingly? in the commentary, MacFarlane swears it's true – during the opening crawl). And maybe it's a little lacklustre because the source material is easily the weakest entry in the original Star Wars trilogy. That said, it's still a far better parody than just about anything we've seen at the cinema in the past two decades. And it's still Family Guy.

There are still quite a few laughs to be had (including a lovely fart gag), the animation is gorgeous (particularly on Blu-ray) and the riff on the third Star Wars film is nicely done. It's also fun to see the cast members from MacFarlane's other two animated shows pop up: Roger and Klaus from American Dad, plus the bears (guess who they play?) and little Rollo from The Cleveland Show. Also putting in an apearance are a rather scary Rush Limbaugh, the crew of th4e Starship Enterprise ... and you won't believe what they do to Meg this time around. Or Seth Green.

It's silly, fun and funny – but not brilliant. I'm glad they've completed the trilogy – the first, Blue Harvest, is still the best by far – but let's all hope that they call it quits now. Do we really want to see them take on the awfulness that is the prequel trilogy? No, neither do I.