Family Guy Presents Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story
Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment

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Rival Fox network brat Bart Simpson might have a cow, but The Family Guy's enfant terrible Stewie Griffin made it into the movies first. To be fair, this 88-minute feature is direct-to-DVD and The Simpsons movie comes to actual theaters in 2008. Regardless, free from network censors, standards & practices and FCC cowboys, Family Guy series creator Seth MacFarlane and gang let it all hang out for nearly an hour and a half in the already boundary-busting cartoon. Stewart Gilligan Griffin, the conniving baby genius who's hell-bent on world domination, spots his grown-up Lemonhead-faced doppelganger on TV and embarks for San Francisco where he will track down who he believes to be his real father.

Stewie hitches a ride with neighborhood sex fiend Quagmire on his "Cross country tour" (talking dog Brian observes, "Isn't there an 'o' in 'country'?"). Before it's over, Stewie is transported 30 years into the future where time travel is the norm, travel posters to the past beckon "See O.J. do it!" and a morbidly obese Britney Spears has lost a leg to diabetes but still performs in her wheelchair. Meanwhile, back in Rhode Island, a TV exec overhears Stewie's actual dad Peter rant at Lackluster Video about the company's moral stance against porn and its policy of editing non-Christian movies (they blur out Streisand's schnoz in Prince of Tides). "Where in the Bible does it say a man can't fire off some knuckle children in the privacy of his neighbor's living room?" Peter rails, and he's given an editorial segment on the evening news. Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story may only feel like three unaired episodes of the show strung together with a common plot line, but it's still the sort of cathartic, hysterically funny attack on the American media and pop culture at large you'll be hard-pressed to find at your average Lackluster Video.

Language options allow you to view the show with audio that's censored, or uncensored where the "fucks" fly free. In the full-length filmmaker commentary, creator/animator/writer/voice talent Seth MacFarlane and the writers riff on what would never make it onto the air, while Seth Green (voice of teenage son Chris) reveals inside tidbits like the inspiration for his character's voice is an imitation of The Silence of the Lambs's serial killer Buffalo Bill. Mila Kundis, the voice of Meg, puts the animators on the spot and asks them what determines what characters can understand Stewie and who can't. The main feature is book-ended by hilarious news footage from both the movie's red carpet premiere and its VIP after-party plus an unkind preview of the Vince Vaughn/Susan Sarandon movie "Two People Who Look Like They Never Sleep." This DVD is both a shameless marketing ploy, and a must-have for fans of the Family Guy, seasoned or new.

by Rob. Walton