REVIEW: ‘LEGO Star Wars Summer Vacation’ is Another Great Plastic Galactic Adventure

LEGO Star Wars Summer Vacation is the latest Disney+ animated Star Wars adventure to show some goofy post-Rise of Skywalker antics among the likes of Rey, Finn, Poe, and more. This time around, the crew is on vacation on the Halycon star cruiser, together for probably the last time in a while. Only they’re not really spending the time together, and it’s really weighing on Finn.

I adore these LEGO Star Wars movies. They’re quite well-animated, always very funny, and filled with fun Star Wars nods and deep cuts alike. I’ll start with the negative to get it out of the way, this is probably my less favorite of the three movies; however, that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it. I absolutely did. It just feels the most hastily made with some parts that drag on a bit too long and a few moments that didn’t really land. The voice talent, while all good in their own right, often felt jarring compared to either the original actors’ voices or even the animated voices I’ve grown used to. Of course, James Arnold Taylor absolutely nails young and old Obi-Wan as ever, and guests like Weird Al, Paul F. Tompkins, and Yvette Nicole Brown add just as much as the select original actors who lent their voices as well.

Beyond the slightly jarring aspects and the uneven pace though, LEGO Star Wars Summer Vacation is a blast. Finn’s frame story is filled with moments that have me dying to hopefully get the further adventures of all the sequel trilogy characters. And each of the three vacation stories as told by Force ghosts brings their own great humor by putting characters we love in hilarious situations. Obi-Wan Kenobi sings karaoke, Vader and Palpatine continue their goofy LEGO relationship winning beach games on Scariff, and the Organa-Solo crew takes a vacation to Endor that goes awry. They all had me laughing hysterically, needing to pause a couple of times to catch my breath. I even cried a bit at the end of the movie, which is a testament to just how much I love seeing these characters together.

The two other stand-out aspects of LEGO Star Wars Summer Vacation are its score and its animation. The score does some of the best work of mixing together Star Wars’ most famous themes from across the franchise, perhaps better than many other Star Wars media. Where often other Star Wars content stays away from using the motifs of the films, we get a huge array of classic and new Star Wars music. The best is when Boba Fett’s theme plays while he chases after Obi-Wan in his ship. As for the animation, I am constantly impressed with how astounding the animation is in the LEGO Star Wars movies. It’s just consistently excellent and particularly impressive how many of the scenes are built into a 3D environment to add depth to the animation. This one doesn’t feel quite as polished, perhaps, as the other two, but it’s still a style I really enjoy.

LEGO Star Wars Summer Vacation is a movie that only asks for your suspension of pedantic Star Wars canon analysis or self-seriousness. If you give it, you’ll get a great time out of it. The movie is so funny as usual and serves as a great reminder of how much potential there still is in stories featuring our favorite sequel trilogy characters.

LEGO Star Wars Summer Vacation is streaming now on Disney+.