Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure isn’t bad. It’s not good. But it’s not bad.
It’s just not terribly interesting. The plot is a bog-standard A to B to C adventure quest, made up of scenes of almost everything animate or inanimate on the moon of Endor trying to murder two children, interspersed with scenes of Ewoks doing Ewok things. The stop-motion creatures are fun, but the decision to have Burl Ives narrate does undercut the dramatic tension a bit. When he introduces the lair of the dreaded Gorax, it’s about as frightening as Rudolph confronting the Bumble.
The Ewoks are the reason for the season, though, and I’m very happy that the film doesn’t overplay the comedy. I was worried we were in for (shudder) Holiday Special-ish slapstick, but no, these Ewoks are much the same as the ones we met in Return of the Jedi. They’re funny in a (mostly) realistic fashion, and they remain brutal killers when appropriate. Tempered slightly for the younger intended audience, of course – there’s no bashing in of Stormtroopers’ skulls, but they do slaughter a couple of monsters, and I’m pretty sure if the little girl hadn’t been so cute and helpless, they would have happily killed and eaten her older brother.
Also, apparently magic exists in the Star Wars universe? Not the Force, but actual magic? I guess we’re just supposed to roll with that. One of the better scenes involves Mace, the human boy, being teleported under the surface of a lake, which, from the underside, is solid as ice. It’s one of the few moments with some real dramatic tension, as everything the Ewoks do to save him fails (except for the very last thing they try, of course), but that lake is definitely magic. As far as Lucasverse vibes go, Ewoks notwithstanding, Caravan of Courage is more Willow than Wars.
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