I am a big fan of the twisted brilliance of Family Guy. Back this year by popular demand (and strong showings on Cartoon Network’s “Adult Swim”) after Fox dumped it a few years back, the Griffin family continues to push the envelope in a Simpsons-meetsSouth Park sort of way. In recent weeks, Fox has been advertising a straight-to-dvd movie, Family Guy Presents: Stewie Griffin: the Untold Story and I was counting down the days until yesterday’s release.
Consider the mystery behind why this was issued straight-to-dvd solved. I would not say that Family Guy Presents sucks, but it is simply not that funny. Piecing together a few references to the revival of the show throughout the hour-and-a-half on screen, it appears that this may have been a project that was going to appear before the show was revived, and there is evidence that creator Seth McFarland and his writing team was trying way too hard to push the envelope. This occasionally happens in a half hour episode, but that is a forgivable sin. They don't ask you to pony up cash for that.
The gist of the plot is that there is a Family Guy movie (very meta!) and in that movie, the evil genius matricidal toddler Stewie has a brush with death that eventually leads to him meeting his future self, which leaves him intolerable of his thirty-something self. It’s is a plot with promise, and I chuckled a few times, but it simply did not sustain. There are too many flat periods, too many over-the-top moments that are not even remotely amusing, too many points where the clunky writing gets in the way.
Continue to love and cherish Family Guy. But do not be reeled in by this cynical ploy to rake in cash from your loyalty. They got $17 of mine (thank Best Buy for clipping $6 off the regular price on release day). And if you do not trust my judgment, ask yourself this – why is there an hour-and-a-half Family Guy movie out there that went straight to dvd? Straight-to video is for three phenomena: Movies that suck, porn, and cynical attempts to score a windfall from an inferior product. Put it this way: This ain’t porn. Any other differentiation is not worth making.
1 comment:
Cramalama --
I agree that American Dad has improved a great deal. I think that Family Guy, the show, is still pretty great, but that movie was just so disappointing. I have gotten my girlfriend to like Family Guy as well, not a minor accomplishment, and she did not even comment last night -- about halfway through she just rolled over and went to bed.
i do think part of it is the little game they tried to play with thje chronology -- if you looked at the inserts and caught some of the references, it is pretty clear that this was done before they were brought back to Fox, maybe even as a bit of an audition tape or something. Then there would not have been the momentum for a feature film, and now even showing it on tv would have been dubious -- too tasteless and not up to standard. Oh well -- if i saved the seven people who read dcat regularly the $20, I will have done my part.
dc
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