The cover says “uncensored, pee-in-your-pants fun.” Well, it’s not uncensored by default (you have to select that in the audio options) and I didn’t actualy pee my pants, but Family Guy presents Stewie Griffin: the Untold Story is the funniest thing I have seen in years. I watched it together with a buddy and, without the use of alcohol or any other drugs, we both laughed so hard that we often had to backtrack the DVD to catch jokes we couldn’t hear over our own peals of laughter. It’s that funny.
Of course, if you know Family Guy at all you’ll realize that this particular brand of humor isn’t exactly aimed at the witty “Frazer” set. It’s rude. It’s crude. In more than one instance you’ll find yourself holding your sides whilst shaking your head in disapproval. Evidently Seth McFarlane doesn’t believe that there could possibly be a subject which is off-limits, and the result is an absolutely hilarious 88 minute video which you’ll never see on television.
The plot, insofar as there is a plot to hold together this string of verbal and sight gags can be summed up by this — in the future people can take vacations not just to different places but to different times, and a 35-year-old Stewie Griffin has decided to visit today’s San Francisco. After briefly seeing 35-year-old Stewie briefly on television, young Stewie, thinking that the older guy is his “real father”, goes west to meet the man and ends up gaining a glimpse of the Griffins 30 years into the future where Chris has become a cop married to a nasty bitch, Meg has become a man named Ron, and Peter and Lois end up in a retirement home.
Built around this feature is a side-splitting prologue built on the idea of a movie premiere and which provides countless opportunities for meta-humor which couldn’t be made to fit into the main movie, like an absurdly funny bit in which Stewie is captured as Saddam Hussein by American soldiers and a terribly offensive — yet still oddly amusing — subplot in which Peter takes over directorial and production duties for the show and decides to make episodes on certain unmentionable subjects. It doesn’t really sound like it would be all that funny, but it works.
For all the obvious humor in the video, though, what really makes this one stand out is the number of jokes that are set up and *not* actually done. For example there is the obvious “Stewie grows up to be gay” subplot — hinted at in many episodes of the TV show — which the video seems to go out of its way to avoid mentioning explicitly, a “child abuse in hell” element which is implicitly set up and explicitly denied, and an incest theme which relies on double-entendre and situational gags but which doesn’t actually happens; I guess that’s what makes the difference between an incest joke being funny and another that’s just plain not funny. One could think that this may be a sign of growing maturity for MacFarlane, but that idea is quickly dispelled by his ending the whole video with a triple fart joke.
To be clear: you’ll want to steer clear of this if you’re offended by tongue-in-cheek jokes about the following: sex (in all its forms), violence, familites, Asian female stereotypes, Disney (both Walt Disney and the Disney company), Bugs Bunny actually getting shot by Elmer (repeatedly), the future, the past, Saddam Hussein, people in their 30s who are still virgins, farting, toddlers drinking, drunk wives and girlfriends (they get that one down particularly well), henpecked husbands, nasty women, fat people, greased-up deaf guys, Merchant Ivory films, local newscasts, entertainment journalists, Randy Newman, Blockbuster Video, Roger Moore, Michael Moore, Wilford Brimley, wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube men, wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube men salemen, “The Joy of Sex” books, Circuit City/Radio Shack stores, old people, airport security, Britney Spears and Condoleeza Rice. In short, everything they make fun of on the televised show, plus a few additional topical references to themes that just weren’t around when the original 3 seasons of the show were first made.
I don’t want to give too many details away — a large part of the humor relies on your being shocked by some of the gags — but if what you’re looking or is a video that’ll make you laugh your head off, Family Guy presents Stewie Griffin: the Untold Story is the one you’re looking for.
