'Skeleton Crew' Is An Insult To Kids and 'Star Wars'
Before you go any further, if you had a great time watching the first two episodes of Skeleton Crew with your kids, definitely turn back now. I do not want to tarnish the thrill of bonding over these types of shows. I’ve been there, and it is a great feeling. Some of my best memories are having my kids’ excitement draw me into a series. Skeleton Crew seems geared to the ten and under crowd, and my headline aside, I’m genuinely curious if it’s hitting with them.
That being said, I had some thoughts. (I meant what I said before: run.)
Skeleton Crew is exactly what it says on the box. It’s Star Wars by way of The Goonies, and it is not subtle about it at all. There are literally pirates, speeder bikes shamelessly serving as BMX bikes, and an Asian kid who’s good at fixing/inventing things. The whole production screams, “Hey, remember ’80s movies!” Christ, one of the kids delivers all of her lines exactly like Buzz in Home Alone when he’s talking about Old Man Marley. “The salt turns the bodies into mummies…”
On paper, that might sound enticing if you already forgot that Stranger Things strip-mined these hills, but in practice, it is blandly inert. Skeleton Crew is the very definition of “content.” There are moving images and characters saying words while some sort of plot happens. Namely, kids find a spaceship in the woods and go on an adventure, with the finding part taking up the whole first episode.
Thanks to a very weird “suburbs in space” setup that feels very awkward inside a Star Wars, we’re introduced to our main characters and their predictable archetypes:
Wim (Ravi Cabot-Conyers): Our Jedi-obsessed main character who makes dumb, impulsive decisions because he hates his boring life where he’s raised by a single dad that’s always at work.
Neel (Robert Timothy Smith): Wim’s loyal best friend, and the elephant kid.
Fern (Ryan Kiera Armstrong): The badass who hates her nepo baby life as the daughter of Undersecretary Fara (Kerry Condon).
KB (Kyriana Kratter): The Asian kid who’s good at fixing/inventing things. We’re seriously still doing this in 2024.
“But, Mike, isn’t Jude Law in Skeleton Crew? I could’ve sworn I saw Jude Law in the trailer.” Yes, he is! However, he does not show up until the final minutes of the second episode, which is a bold creative choice. (OK, technically, he shows up in the opening scene because that’s obviously him under that pirate helmet.) His character introduction is probably the only interesting thing to happen in the show, and that’s because the bar is 800 feet underground by the time we get to him.
While the first episode blows its runtime on putting the kids on the buried ship and then blasting them into space, to their immediate regret, the second episode revolves entirely around them going to a spaceport for some pirate hijinks. Granted, we learn that their home world is apparently a mythical treasure planet, but holy sh*t, this show feels more like an advertisement for a theme park than an actual TV series.
Anyway, if it feels like I’m breezing through the plot that’s because, again, not much happens. By the end of the mercifully short Episode 2, the kids end up in a pirate cell where they meet Law’s character. He promises he can get them home if they take him on their ship. But, first, he busts out a little surprise by using the Force to grab a prison key. Golly gee whiz, he’s a pirate and a Jedi?! I wonder if he’ll train the kid that treats them like they’re The Avengers? (I wish to God I was joking.)
Fade to black, and that’s Skeleton Crew so far. A mind-numbing exercise in what if Star Wars was an Amblin joint. I cannot believe there was money for this, but The Acolyte had to be cut short. People thought that show had bad writing and unlikeable characters? Wait ‘til they get a load of this.
