March 29, 2006

{     Wondershozen Season 1 DVD     }    

Using elements from kids television like puppets, child actors, cartoons, etc., dirtying them up for laughs and presenting it as adult entertainment is nothing new. The Groove Tube, a skit-oriented '70's comedy, did it (using an actual penis as the head of a 'puppet' on a park bench in one scene and a clown kids show host reading porn to his child audience in another). Peter Jackson's early masterpiece Meet the Feebles did it too (complete with a rabbit puppet who thought he had AIDS, and a hippo who fucks a Walrus puppet only to go on a machine gun rampage at the end). Hell even Broadway has done it with Avenue Q (and it won a Tony). So to say Wondershozen, the 30 minute "Kids Show" that appears on MTV 2, usually very late at night on the weekends, is original would be wrong. That's not all that's wrong with this show though.

In fact, there's not a whole lot that's right. I'm talking politically now though. But that's what makes it beautiful, brilliant, and more hilarious than anything else on TV right now. The art collective PFFR who are the brains behind this operation use it to call out more of America's problems than John Stewart, Bill Maher, and Steven Colbert combined. From religion to retards to race issues nothing is sacred. It's all skewered, mocked and ridiculed usually by devious children and unassuming puppets. Their form of shit and violence humor coupled with the way they fuck with the general public will catch you off guard and make you laugh as though you'd seen your asshole boss get shit on by a flying cow while porn stars masturbated with ice cream crucifixes around him. It couldn't be a more vital necessity in today's increasingly conservative, religiously manipulated, corporately conditioned globo-world.

For those of you who either haven't seen it at all or don't have cable and are tired of the low quality QuickTime files floating around the Internet listen up! They finally released a DVD of the first season just days before the 2nd season's premiere.

It's got great packaging including a "hairy" foldout of one of the puppets you won't soon forget and a great "Hang in There" poster that would make a lovely addition to any office, home or play den. The extras are a gas too. From outtakes and auditions with the kids and a couple of the segments, commentary that I haven't listened to yet (but I'm sure is awesome), a PFFR music video, and a preview of a cartoon from season 2. I wish they hadn't put in all those "Warnings" about how this is not a kids show they have to have for TV and the Flavor Flav reading to the children thing is contrived. But those are small points of contention. This DVD is rock solid subversive entertainment as rare and beautiful as a presidential assassination or a congressman's televised suicide...

covered in vanilla boners...

and Mommy's messy tongue in your butt you dirty diaper minority.

By Aaron in Film & TV | Comments: