Things That I Should Like, But Don’t

March 12, 2006 · Filed Under zeitgeist

There are some things out there, entertainment-wise, that I really should like, given my propensity for darker, cynical, snarky, and/or irreverent humor.

But I don’t.

Family Guy is my gold-standard example of this. By all rights, I should be a huge Family Guy fan. After all, I was a huge Ren & Stimpy fan right from the get-go. Same with South Park & Futurama, just to name a few. But Family Guy just doesn’t get it done for me, and I’ve wondered & thought about why for quite a while now. I think it has to do with the fact that Family Guy is over-the-top just for the sake of being over-the-top. I don’t mind a certain amount of crudity and/or off-color humor, if there’s a point being made. And that’s where, IMO, Family Guy falls far short of the mark. It’s not literate enough for my tastes. South Park, for all it’s faults, is very literate, and has quite a bit of valid social commentary just under its oft crude & slimy surface. And, while Family Guy isn’t as gratuitously grotesque & without any redeeming qualities as, say, Drawn Together, it’s still not worthy of the acclaim it’s received, IMO.

All that, however, is just a prelude to my officially backtracking on another entry in this category. Specifically, Napoleon Dynamite is no longer in this category. The first time I tried to watch this movie, I couldn’t make it all the way through it. I hated it. And even though it bothered me a little that I hated it, I was more than willing to write it off as a lost cause. Lately, however, I’ve been hearing some renewed buzz about how good the movie is, and that some folks didn’t “get” it until they’d seen it a second or third time. So, when I saw that it was on HBO (we just got HBO added to our DirecTV so that we could watch new episodes of The Sopranos, don’tcha know…), I figured I’d give it another shot.

And, what do you know, it didn’t suck!
So I can change my opinion, after all…
(but it won’t happen with Family Guy…)