Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy (Seth Macfarlane's): Uncut! (2008)

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General		Extras
Category	Animation	Main Menu Audio Featurette-Opening Night Gallery-Production Art
Rating
Year Of Production	2008
Running Time	51:38
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Ads Then Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Greg Colton
Studio Distributor	Twentieth Century Fox	Starring	None Given
Case	Amaray Variant
RPI	?	Music	Walter Murphy Andy Tauke Linda Lamontagne

    Seth McFarlane's Cavalcade of Comedy is a collection of animated skits from cheaply-animated comedy guru Seth McFarlane. Most of the skits on this disc were produced for an Internet site of the same name, although there are a reasonable number exclusive to this DVD. The bulk of the skits play out like the many cutaway non-sequesters from Seth McFarlane's main cash cow Family Guy - only much more likely to offend. In a nutshell, this is all the stuff he couldn't get away with putting on TV - sex gags, religious gags, profanity, hilariously harsh digs at celebrities and some material that was just too plain weird for TV. There is occasionally a common theme between skits, but each is entirely independent of each other. No story or characters to get in the way, just gags.

    The formula is pretty simple. Every skit is short and sweet. Nothing runs over 2 minutes. Plenty are under 30 seconds. In fact, the whole collection of 50 skits runs a lean 52 minutes including credits. Whilst this probably doesn't seem like much, let alone enough to warrant a whole DVD, there is nary a dud in the entire collection. This is pure quality over quantity, and lean and mean was definitely the best way to go with this collection, rather than throw in another 30 minutes of filler just for the sake of reaching feature length, as each successive skit builds on the momentum of the last. Seth McFarlane's Cavalcade of Comedy is essential viewing for fans of Family Guy, American Dad or any of its ilk, even casual fans, as this is the cream of the crop.

Video

    The video is presented in its original 1.33:1 full frame aspect ratio.

    The video is clean and clear, with no sign of video or film artefacts. The animation looks cheap and simple, but is well and truly fit for purpose. The colours are bright and vibrant.

    English subtitles are present. based on the portion I sampled, they appear to be accurate and reasonably well timed

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    A single English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kbps) audio track is present.

    There is nothing fancy about this track at all, nor does there need to be. The audio is clean and well mixed. The dialogue is clear and easy to understand (save for one particular skit in which it is deliberately the case - Bob Dylan hanging out with Tom Waits and Popeye).

    There is rarely any particularly noticeable surround usage and only a modest degree of bass reaches the subwoofer.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    The disc opens with a couple of skip-able ads, one an anti-piracy clip and the other touting the awesomeness of Blu-ray, before opening to a static menu.

Launch Party Featurette (4:21)

    A couple of minutes of footage for the DVD launch party. A handful of B-list stars are present, including many of the voice actors for the skits. They watch the skits, they tell us how funny they are and drink free booze. About the only worthwhile side of this is putting faces to some of the voices.

Image Gallery

    Three sets of character production images, each showing the same characters at different stages of design (raw outline, cleaned up outline and final coloured character). Vaguely interesting, certainly more so that a collection of stills from the skits themselves, but probably only really likely to interest anyone curious in cheap TV animation.

    The Region 4 edition is identical to the Region 1 edition, save for PAL/NTSC differences and a host of Scandinavian subtitles (which the Region 1 edition misses out on).

    Seth McFarlane's Cavalcade of Comedy is a short and sweet collection of animated gags. Well worth the effort for fans of Family Guy, American Dad or any of its ilk. This is hysterical stuff.

    The audio and video are as good as they need to be for the material - very basic, but free of any issues. The couple of minor extras provided are not really worth the effort.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall