If you’re familiar with Seth MacFarlane’s Family Guy, then you’ll know that a majority of the show’s funniest moments are those quick cutaway gags that have little to do with the plot or central characters.  Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy is essentially a collection of these cutaway gags slapped on a DVD and played back to back. No continuing plot, no overriding characters, no particular order. Just raw, uncensored hilarity… albeit for fifty short minutes.

Think of it as a collection of all the shorts the network deemed too explicit to air on TV, as MacFarlane has really taken his gloves off here (yes, they were still on with Family Guy). This is not for the easily offended, nor those who can’t laugh at crude toilet humour, as there’s an uncanny number of jokes that are faeces related. Some of them are genuinely funny, such as a rock climber who really has to go whilst climbing high above an ill-positioned wedding ceremony. Some of them are not so funny, such as where Fred Flintstone is heard (for over a minute) doing his business inside a stone-age cubicle.

In true MacFarlane style, there’s plenty of satirical pop culture references to sink your teeth into; from imagining what it’d be like if Quentin Tarantino performed a circumcision to being stuck in the middle of the ocean with a self-obsessed Matthew McConaughey (hilariously voiced by Seth Green). There’s also number of reoccurring shorts,  such as a series of skits that speculate what sex would be like with the likes of Dick Cheney, a midget and Optimus Prime of Transformers.

There are a number of shorts that seriously miss their mark, some that are dragged out too long and some that are just needlessly profane without being at all amusing. But when it’s funny, it’s downright hilarious. My personal favourite skit is a modern rewrite of the old proverb ‘he who lives in a glass house shouldn’t throw stones…unless you’ve got a f***ing machine gun on your roof.’

But since the single-disc DVD contains only 51 minutes of material, and currently retails at a costly $35 (AU), it’s hard to  forgive the inconsistency of quality. At that price, you could buy a Family Guy or American Dad season box set that features hours more material. Even if you’ve seen all the episodes and are looking for something new, you could just watch the deleted scenes on these DVD’s as that is essentially all Cavalcade of Comedy is: a string of outtakes.

Perhaps if the special features were up to scratch, the hefty price and short runtime would have been forgiven. Yet Cavalcade of Comedy has criminally few extras on offer. First off, there’s a 4 ½ minute video of the red-carpet premiere, where host Erin Meyers interviews the cast and crew of the show, who each take turns in defining the word ‘cavalcade’. It’s short and sweet, but nothing of great insight.  Aside from that, there’s still galleries of the animations in various stages of completion. That’s it. No commentaries, no behind the scene features, no nothing.

Ultimately, It’s hard to heartily recommend Cavalcade of Comedy to anyone but the most die-hard Seth MacFarlane enthusiasts. It’s certainly funny, but no more than three episodes of Family Guy played back to back, and they cost a mere $2.99 a piece on iTunes.

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