CARAVAN OF COURAGE: AN EWOK ADVENTURE - REVIEW

After the original Star Wars trilogy, somehow the idea of an Ewok spin-off got tossed around and eventually became a thing. As if Return Of The Jedi didn't have enough puppets and furry creatures, we were then graced with not one but two made-for-TV movies all about the Ewoks.

And of course I rented the hell out of those movies as a kid because...

I was unhinged, I guess.

Of course the point was to select some kid-friendly characters from the movies and give younger viewers something to keep them quiet at home post-Star Wars but, as we all know, kids would have probably much preferred a Boba Fett spin-off or, at the very least, some show about C-3PO and R2-D2 getting into all sorts of wacky adventures.

But no: we got Ewoks and a mostly unwatchable Holiday Special.

Thanks.

Luckily, the blandly titled Caravan Of Courage: An Ewok Adventure, which was somehow released in theatres in Europe, at least had some sort of story and dialogs a human could understand. On the other hand, seeing Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher make complete asses of themselves was always rather entertaining.

The main non-Ewok characters in this film are young brother and sister Mace (Eric Walker) and Cindel (Aubree Miller), whose parents are left stranded on the forest moon of Endor some time after the events of The Empire Strikes Back, supposedly. The parents vanish and the kids meet the Ewoks who soon take them under their wing. Cindel, the youngest, then becomes sick and a search party is formed to find her parents, leading everyone to a mini-battle with some ugly-looking beast called The Gorax.

Don't bet on too many fireworks with this one, no lightsaber battles here, and the whole thing is pretty low-budget so don't expect much of anything really except the odd blaster shooting match, Ewoks jumping about, an entire sequence dedicated to fireflies (I kid you not), some out-of-place magic, a fully unrecognisable Warwick Davis and bizarre, under-animated monsters. This all makes for a sort of watchable yet criminally dull experience and the fact that the Ewoks look positively terrifying with their buck-teeth and those eyes always popping out of their sockets doesn't exactly make you want to watch it with your kids or show the film to younger siblings.

While Caravan Of Courage gets some extra points for actually trying to tell a story and entertaining an audience as well as (spoilers?) daring to kill a character or two, it remains an entirely skippable adventure you'll never regret not seeing or never re-watching.

Mostly harmless, if tedious cash-in.