The SmarK DVD Rant for Seth MacFarlane’s Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy

Now if there’s one thing you often hear about Seth MacFarlane, it’s that he’s far too shy about promoting himself and really needs to release more material and get his name out there. C’mon, Seth, only three ongoing series with your name on them? You can’t be the next Jerry Bruckheimer without some AMBITION! Anyway, scathing sarcasm aside, Seth makes buckets of money off Family Guy but I guess needed another creative outlet to get all the manatee jokes out of his system or something. So if you think the show is bogged down too much with plot and would rather just watch 50 minutes of the random cutaway gags, this is the perfect DVD for you. That being said, this thing makes no promises of being anything OTHER than a series of incredibly filthy and random jokes, and as long as you accept it, it’s laugh out loud funny for most of the DVD. Obviously a series of minute-long concept gags is going to be hit-or-miss at the best of times, I’d say that most of them hit. An equal number are “manatee jokes”, though, the idea coined by South Park for the seemingly random process used to craft the cutaway gags on Family Guy. However, while Family Guy might at least be watchable for the ‘tween set who think the pseudo-dirty network jokes are fresh and hilarious, this DVD is definitely not appropriate for anyone under 18. Unless you want your kid singing a vaudeville ode to the best vagina in town. Damn Seth and his catchy songs.

There’s no connecting thread in anything here, but topics include:

A retelling of the Frog Prince.

A horse telling racist jokes in a bar. Definitely one that felt like someone picked sentence fragments out of a vat of beach balls.

Wile E. Coyote coping with life without the Roadrunner. Awesome punchline here.

What happens at Cat Meetings.

How a gay knight handles a dragon attack. Probably my favourite one.

Fred Flintstone taking a shit (not much in the way of subtle humor here)

A dog on the $25,000 Pyramid. The punchline here is older than vaudeville.

Super Mario discovers what happens after you rescue the princess.

Getting stuck on a raft with Matthew McConaughey (you knew Seth would go there again)

Persian guys trying to pick up girls.

Living in a glass house in the 21^st century.

Sex in pretty much any situation Seth can draw a punchline out of. Midgets, politicians, necrophiliacs, AIDS-infected Canadian flight attendants, you name it. There’s pretty much something for anyone to get offended by here.

Quentin Tarantino performing a circumcision. You can probably write this one yourself and find something funnier.

Fred and Barney trying to get into an exclusive club.

If The Wizard of Oz was real. He seems to mine that one a lot.

Monkeys discussing religion.

Mimes with marital problems.

Bob Dylan meets Popeye and Tom Waits. That one pretty much writes itself.

The truth behind Mad Cow disease.

A Scotsman who can’t stop commenting on movies that he’s watching.

Really dirty vaudeville songs. Catchy, though!

Where beavers got their name from.

If Jesus was really fat.

Magic Johnson meets Dracula.

The settlers use questionable methods to buy Manhattan from the Indians.

Bob Marley undermines his own murder defense. This is more clever than funny.

Vishnu’s birthday.

Ted Nugent’s Christmas Carol. Again, just a manatee joke.

Entourage in 10 seconds.

Things You Never Hear. So very true for all of them.

Small talk with Aunt Helen. This one is the most incredibly wrong and yet hilarious.

Two ducks watch Meet the Parents. Again, why?

Jeff Goldblum wafers. This is like the very definition of the manatee joke.

Marie Antoinette works on her speech.

Sheep shearing gets inappropriate.

Why you shouldn’t feed dogs chocolate and then put them in the microwave with a tinfoil hat. Well you’d think that one would be self-explanatory.

So yeah, a mixed bag, but freed from the shackles of plot and logic, this is the most purely funny and anarchic that Seth has been in a long time and really feels like a throwback to the early days of Family Guy when it was an edgy and entertaining show instead of whatever it is now. Plus it’s all uncensored, which is nice. I’d pick it up as long as it’s cheap, but keep in mind that it’s less than a hour long and once you’ve seen the jokes there’s probably not going to be much replay value here. (Rating: ***1/2)

Audio & Video

Oddly enough the screener disc says “Widescreen version” on it, even though it’s nothing of the sort. It’s just standard full-screen, looking the same as any episode of Family Guy or American Dad but with different characters. The disc sent by Fox was, as usual, just a screener disc and not the real thing, so I can’t really judge video quality. It’s presented in Dolby 5.1, but there’s nothing going on outside of the center channel. (Rating: **1/2)

Bonus Features

You get a quick puff piece about the “red carpet premiere” for the DVD, with various C-list celebrities laughing at the jokes, and a photo gallery. Not even a commentary or anything that comes close to adding extra value to an already-short DVD set. (Rating: *)

The Bottom Line: The thing is, it’s really funny, but probably only once. You can watch all these already on Seth’s webpage, but only in censored form, so if you really want to hear Fred Flintstone saying some really filthy dialogue or you care about seeing cartoon boobs, this is the only place for it. There was absolutely no effort put into this by Fox, though, as extras as nonexistent and that’s just silly for a disc that only uses an hour of storage space. Definitely a rental for watching with buddies when you’re drinking, but not something you’re going to be able to justify a $20 purchase on.