Seth MacFarlane has made his name through the success of his three TV shows; Family Guy, American Dad and The Cleveland Show. Seen as a more adult alternative to The Simpsons, MacFarlane’s animated shows are edgy, funny and often dark in their humour. His latest project is Seth MacFarlane’s Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy which being released on DVD and Blu-ray.
Seth MacFarlane’s Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy started life as a series of animated shorts and was launched on MacFarlane’s YouTube channel SethComedy. Taking the approach of Family Guy’s popular (and often random) cutaway scenes, each episode is a bizarre segment featuring characters and celebrities we know and love. Over the DVD’s 50 minute running time we witness a man stuck in a life raft with a boastful Matthew McConaughey, an incomprehensible conversation between Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Popeye and Muhammed Ali and a series of segments showing characters having sex with various people and objects (a tube of toothpaste being the one that sticks in your mind).
The short nature of each segment means that the DVD doesn’t particularly flow very well and it feels very stop-and-starty. The other issue is that Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy is incredibly hit and miss. Some of the segments are hilarious like He Who Lives in a Glass House but some of them are just a bit pointless like Fred Flintstone Takes A Shit. It is this varying quality that unfortunately means the DVD isn’t a roaring success and it could be the first time we’ve been truly disappointed with Seth MacFarlane. These random segments work well in the context of Family Guy but on their own they don’t really stand up.
Extras on the DVD are thin and include a featurette (Red Carpet Piece) and a stills gallery based around character models.
Seth MacFarlane’s Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy isn’t as fantastic as we’d hoped it’d be. It pales in comparison to MacFarlane’s other shows but there are some truly hilarious moments. If you can stand the hit-to-miss ratio of the segments then you’ll enjoy this. Just be warned that it doesn’t compare to Peter Griffin and the rest of Quahog’s inhabitants.
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