Description

Once in a while controversial but at all times hilarious, Robert Smigel’s “TV Funhouse” cartoons have contained some of Saturday Night Live’s most memorable material in recent years. Ace and Gary, “The Ambiguously Gay Duo” (voiced by Steve Carell and Stephen Colbert), host this critically acclaimed collection, which features hits like “X-Presidents,” “Saddam and Osama,” “The Narrator That Ruined Christmas,” “Smurfette,” “The New Adventures of Mr. T,” “Fun With Real Audio” and more, with appearances by the full cast of SNL.No subject is off limits. Learn what’s really inside the Disney vault, what Jewish folks do on Christmas Eve, and what makes Michael Jackson glide. As Mr. T would say, “If you imagine in yourself, drink your school, stay in drugs, and don’t do milk, you’ll be able to get work!”
The envelope-pushing cartoons created by Robert Smigel for “Saturday TV Funhouse” on Saturday Night Live are tasteless, crass, borderline offensive, and almost universally hilarious. This disc collects two dozen of the best, and viewing them together makes for a deliciously warped vision of Smigel and a relentlessly silly prism through which to view American pop culture. Living proof: The action-adventure heroes Ace and Gary, “The Ambiguously Gay Duo” (voiced, with deadpan earnestness, by Steve Carell and Stephen Colbert), are if truth be told pretty unambiguous, but the joke is played just straight enough–whilst fighting to save the earth, they at all times allocate time to accessorize–and to pat one another on the bum for a job well done. In “Bambi 2002,” Disney is roasted for its policy of pulling choice children’s titles from the marketplace and releasing instead direct-to-video sequels that may not be up to the level of the original. In the “sequel,” Bambi’s mom is OK (“it was just a head wound, son”), and Bambi and his forest posse are hip-hop kids fighting terrorists in their spare time. “Remember that, kids,” the TV announcer intones, “it’s all the Bambi you can get for 10 years.” Other highlights include the cartoon beauty contest “Are You Hot?” (in which Strawberry Shortcake beats out Betty Boop for sex appeal), and the black-and-white industrial training film “Sexual Harassment and You,” which advises employees on the three rules for trysting with a co-worker whilst avoiding a sexual harassment lawsuit: 1. Be Handsome. 2. Be Attractive. and 3. Don’t be unattractive. Elsewhere, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush are skewered by their own words, and Michael Jackson reappears as a Hanna-Barbera creation–and still manages to be creepy. Extras include commentaries by Smigel, Carell, Colbert, Al Franken, James Carville, and others, as well as extra cartoon snippets and original art and storyboards. –A.T. Hurley
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