Dotsthavesp I wanted to but couldn't!

Marva It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Lela The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Kimball Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

liquidcelluloid-1 Network: Comedy Central; Genre: Sketch Comedy; Content Rating: TV-14; Classification: Contemporary (Star range: 1 - 4); Season Reviewed: Complete Series (1 season)Robert Smigel, the voice of Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog, spins off his shining diamond in the rough 'TV Funhouse' animated shorts from Saturday Night Live into his own sketch comedy show for Comedy Central. The title couldn't be more appropriate, as the show is a brightly colored carnival ride through the absurd, the sick and the twisted in Smigel's mind now given free reign for a full 22 minutes. It is delivered to us like a full-length children's television show. Doug (Doug Dale) is our gosh darn, sweet as sugar host, always coming to us in ridiculous get-up of whatever theme day today's show is about - Astronaut Day, Hawaiian Day, Western Day, etc. His puppet pals are the AniPals and include a turtle, a chicken and his chicks, a dog who does nothing but chase his tail with malicious intent and Triumph himself. We follow the AniPals into their world and out of the studio as they discuss all manner of foul things and get into all kinds of wacky situations. It's pretty well known at this point that what Comedy Central finds funnier than anything in the world is not a well timed comedy of errors or witty naturalistic dialogue, but nothing more than scatological vulgarity - especially when it is juxtaposed against a backdrop as wholesome as a kid's show. Swearing puppets? Comedy gold to them. Despite this autopilot programming, they actually stumbled onto something with this show. 'TV Funhouse' is actually funny. It works because the show doesn't tip it's hand and ironically snicker at itself, but plays it's cornball set-up with a poker face. Smigel doesn't spare us from anything crude here, making ample use of projective vomit, novelty poop, hair balls and - in a particularly disgusting segment - Terrance the snake hacking up a mystery item that he ate that day. But Smigel does it all with a giddy smile. He splatters the walls with that wit, edge and feverish enthusiasm that make his 'Ambiguously Gay Duo' or 'Fun with Real Audio' segments on 'SNL' such a hoot. His dead-pan animated segments were the best, featuring such things as 'Wonderman' whose soul goal was to save only beautiful women and get his alias some action and 'Sted-Man' in which Oprah's live-in boyfriend Stedman haplessly pretends to be a CIA agent to avoid commitment.Most amazingly, 'Funhouse' is able to keep it's pace up at a funny pitch almost the entire 22 minutes. There are dud skits here and there, but any attempt at sketch comedy series in primetime is wrought with dead spots and minefields. The disaster that was 'The Dana Carvey Show' proved that even the most talented comic can't keep every sketch in each episode hysterical. So Smigel hits more than he misses, particularly compared to most shows. That is quite an achievement in this genre. Disgusting, fitfully funny and lined with pointed commentary. I can imagine that if this type of offbeat crude comedy is ever going to get appreciated as a kind of post-modern art it would have to be from Robert Smigel leading the charge. I'd follow him. * * *

eskovan1 Those who didn't like or didn't 'get' this show simply suffered from a lack of imagination. They didn't like it for the same reason they don't like The Simpsons or, even more so, South Park.People see a cartoon or a puppet show and a switch in their brain closes. There are only certain things they expect from a cartoon character or puppet and they are incapable of accepting anything else.And the vulgarity of TV Funhouse (or South Park) seems so out of place in a puppet show (or cartoon) that they think that's all there is to the humor. Cartoon kids or puppets getting bleeped saying f---.And if that was all there was to the humor these shows wouldn't be funny. But its not all there was. The scripts for TV Funhouse were very well written, intelligent, complex and witty, and actually gave the puppet characters somewhat realistic personalities.The scripts were also, however, extremely warped, twisted and dark. And that's the other problem. Some people not only can't accept these kind of things coming from a traditionally kid's form of entertainment, they just refuse to accept the idea that humor can come from these things at all! When in fact, this is where the best laughs almost always come from. And TV Funhouse was no exception.So if your idea of humor stops at a drunken Lucy slurring, "Veta-viga-vega" a hundred times over and over then no, TV Funhouse is definitely not for you.But if you're not put off by a little (or a lot of) vulgarity and appreciate original, very politically incorrect satire then check out TV Funhouse. You won't be disappointed.

Jake-215 What the hell was this? I haven't seen something this unfunny since Ghallager. All I have to do to get the same kind of treatment from the show is sit in my room with sock puppet and make fart noises with my mouth. I'm just glad they got rid of this before it got any worse. I hope Robert Smigle goes back to the Gay Duo. That there is something worth laughing at.

Hotoil Now I personally enjoyed some of the TV Funhouse cartoons that aired during Saturday Night Live over the past few years, especially the fun with real audio bits. So when Comedy Central announced it was doing a series based on these inserts, I thought it had promise. I mean, it had to be better than crap like Strip Mall, The Man Show & The League of Gentlemen, right? But no, they've topped themselves again.First of all, there is about one animated short per show. The rest is a bunch of crappy puppets saying dirty words and humping real animals. I realize this is a never-ending stream of hilarity to the moron population, but really - are these the same people responsible for the SNL cartoons?All in all, top notch humour and very entertaining - if your drunk and six-years-old.