The Film
If I had to describe
Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy, I'd describe it as a raunchier, animated version of
Saturday Night Live. Stringing together brief animated sketches lampooning everything from religion to popular culture icons like Hilary Duff and Matthew McConaughey,
Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy ranges from the funny to the puerile to the just plain vile. Set free from the confining restraints of network television, the creator of
Family Guy and co-creator of
American Family lets loose, letting his mind take him where it would.
Sadly, MacFarlane's mind doesn't stray too far from what a typical eighth grader might find amusing; it's all sex, bodily fluids, and racist jokes attacking just about every ethnic group you can think of with only the occasionally clever social commentary thrown in. If you don't mind running jokes about sex with sheep, then
Cavalcade is definitely for you; otherwise it is mostly 56 minutes minutes of hardly amusing "high jinks."
As for the animation, MacFarlane does nothing groundbreaking there either, and stays close to his usual, easily recognizable style, readily seen on
The Family Guy. Settings are sparse and characters look familiar, though the animators do get to display their skills at rendering some famous animated characters like Fred & Barney or Wile E. Coyote.
The Picture
Upscaled, upscaled, upscaled! Do I really need to say anything else? Although
Cavalcade purports to be in HD, it is obviously upscaled from a standard definition source and shows obvious signs of it with edge enhancement and haloing around the edges of line art, mosquito effects and some slight color banding. I'm not sure what the point of putting this on Blu-ray might be or if this is just some sort of mastering error, but it is definitely not true high definition. On the plus side, the colors look vivid and if played back on decent gear some scenes are clean enough to pass for high definition.
The Sound
The English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz/24-bit) lossless mix available is nothing thrilling either, but being a mostly dialogue-driven affair, it gets the job done with clean and intelligible dialogue and believable enough sound effects. The surround channels are rather stagnant, however, and the subwoofer might as well be non-existent in this mix.
The Extras
In keeping with the thrown-together feel of the rest of this release, the extras also feel tacked on. Fox has provided footage of the
Cavalcade of Comedy Red Carpet Premiere (1.33:1; 480i/60) and dozens of character sketches (
Rough Character Models, Cleaned Up Character Models, Colored Character Models) as the only extras on this release. The character sketches may be interesting to look through once to see how some of the characters were developed, but nothing here adds a great value to this release.
Final Thoughts
Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy is a definite miss all around, from the upscaled video on this Blu-ray Disc to the offbeat (and off-color) humor in its sketches. Keep it away from the kids and leave it on the store shelves would be my recommendation.
Where to Buy
Product Details
- Video Codec: AVC/MPEG-4
- Language: English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz/24-bit)
- Subtitles: English SDH, French, Spanish
- Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
- Number of discs: 1
- Rating: Unrated
- Studio: 20th Century Fox
- Blu-ray Disc Release Date: May 12, 2009
- Run Time: 54 minutes
- List Price: $24.99
- Extras:
- Red Carpet Premiere
- Still Galleries: Character Models
