Jedi Break Room (web series review ).

‘The Jedi Break Room is a place where hard working Jedi can kick back and relax between missions. It seems that for budgetary reasons the Dark and Light sides of the force have merged and two former enemies meet up and have a chat.

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfkYfFk4t-hr-gTBr-aUKqmNkB4nmZ8s5

Written and directed by Matt Dundas and starring Brock Snyder and Jonas Tavela, this is a series which proudly displays its love of the source materials. The props seem to be a couple of bed sheets and a generic vaguely SF background photo. This is minimalist but amusing all the same. Much of the humour comes from the occasional glimpse of regular clothing and the total lack of any kind of acting or staging. It would be hard to find two less likely looking Jedi, Hayden Christensen excepted, of course.

The action is restricted to the two performers in said brown polyester mix sheets and is set in front of the aforementioned photo and that is it. The actors clearly are having a good time with the material and there were a few giggles and a handful of proper laugh out loud moments. The humour is pitched at a pretty unsophisticated level but there is a place for simplicity sometimes. The comedy is more ‘Spaceballs’ than Oscar Wilde by far

The hardened ‘Star Wars’ fan might take exception to this series but anything worthwhile can benefit from a bit of parody. The writing clearly comes from love of the films, so can only be a good thing.

The Star Wars Universe is pretty big and heavily populated so the existence of at least two slackers is pretty likely

It would probably be best to avoid this if iconoclastic humour isn’t your thing.

Each episode runs for about a minute and a half and there currently are six episodes. A good laugh every minute or so is a pretty good hit rate and worth a few minutes of your time. Far and away my favourite joke involves salvaging on Dagobah but I won’t give away the punchline.

‘Jedi Break Room’ is humorous and simple. Invest a few minutes of your time and have a some giggles.

Andy Bollan

June 2014

written and directed by Matt Dundas. 6 * 90 second episodes

cast: Brock Snyder and Jonas Tavela

check out websites: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfkYfFk4t-hr-gTBr-aUKqmNkB4nmZ8s5 or http://tinyurl.com/jediwaitingroom