As anyone knows who has ever watched the hit FOX show, Family Guy, the pacing thrives on, and to some extent depends on, these short, intermittent cut scenes of randomly related humor. Sometimes they feature the characters from the show, but just as often they are off-show or pop culture references meant to prop up the episode's premise with an extra sight gag. They are generally very clever and are a trademark of Family Guy.
For his Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy, creator Seth MacFarlane, taking off from the idea of those short items, has created new ones and collected them together into a stand-alone piece. In another interesting twist, he put the collection online at the website Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Comedy for fans to watch for free. The site served MacFarlane-created advertisements before each sketch (the ads were sometimes as long or longer than the actual sketch), but it's still not a bad vehicle for the idea.
The new Blu-ray and DVD releases collect those shorts, commercial-free. Also, this "uncensored" version features some naughtier words and includes some extra content from the Internet versions. It's the complete collection, but is it any good?
The Movie
The biggest crime with MacFarlane's style of humor is to not generate a laugh. At its core, this collection focuses on just the puerile and mean-spirited humor from the show - which is okay if it's in service of something that can entertain. Generally it is, at least to some degree, but here we get those elements without the funny.
It's not that its completely devoid of humor - there are a handful of very clever and very funny sketches included - but the good is inordinately outweighed by the bad. Visual mismatch scenarios are set up, in hopes that an ironic dichotomy will do the work on its own, and then left to hang. And several of the bits will only be funny to 11-year-old boys who have no choice but to giggle in embarrassment when someone drops the f-bomb. In short, it's about ten percent genuine comedy, and ninety percent Seth MacFarlane at his laziest and most crude.
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