Admittedly, I think Seth MacFarlane’s brand of humor is either something that clicks with you, or something that doesn’t. I have to confess that when his flagpole series Family Guy had its initial run on TV, it lured me in as something that was fresh and cutting-edge, akin to the first time I got hooked on The Simpsons. The series and MacFarlane then became cult icons when Family Guy was prematurely cancelled — creating fervor among fans and great success on the home video market that led to a rare occasion when a series actually was resurrected due to popular demand. While MacFarlane managed to continually push the envelope of censorship and good taste with Family Guy, he seems to have gone in the completely opposite direction with the less successful American Dad, a series that lost me from the get-go. As his interests and projects have expanded into other areas, it also seems that he has lost some of his edge — especially with the once-volatile Family Guy that has became more and more repetitive and sophomoric over time. While still amusing in fits and starts, of late Family Guy has quickly fallen behind The Simpsons in terms of overall wit and South Park in terms of mercilessly skewering pop culture.

That being said, the one constant and surefire element of Family Guy that always seemed to hit it out of the park for me was the seemingly incongruent and out-of-left-field cutaways that often followed one of Peter Griffin’s distracted thoughts. These little “reenactment” detours always made me chuckle, if only for the fact that they were so random and pointless. If you took fifty of these one-minute mini cartoons and strung them together without rhyme or reason, you’d get the gist of Seth MacFarlane’s Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy, a one-hour collection of vignettes that was originally produced as a series of viral videos on the Internet as a promotion with Burger King. Now MacFarlane has shamelessly packaged all fifty shorts into one albeit brief movie for release on a single DVD and, oddly enough, Blu-ray. While most of these little vignettes are hit-or-miss, some are pretty amusing, with a few real howlers thrown in for good measure. But be forewarned: those used to MacFarlane’s cutting-edge but sanitized for prime-time gags should take both the “uncensored” subtitle and unrated label very seriously here. Virtually every short employs four-letter words and/or gross-out scatological humor you won’t find in Family Guy or American Dad.

I suppose there’s no accounting for taste in this post-There’s Something About Mary world, but while unique talents like the Farrelly brothers and Judd Apatow and his clan of usual suspects have built their crude jokes around credible characters and stories with heart, others think simply throwing feces at a wall — or in the case of Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy, onto a bride and groom — merits a laugh. You know, ‘cause it’s poop! Indeed, that is the entire set-up, execution and punch line of a short titled “The Mountain Climber” in a nutshell. What was intended to make me laugh only made me wince. Thankfully, few of the segments here exceed the minute mark, so just as the dust settles and you try to shake off the memory of what you’ve just seen, you’re on to another unrelated short. Of the most egregiously crude and unfunny offerings that completely miss the mark here along with “The Mountain Climber” are: “Name That Animal Penis,” a lame sight gag involving Kermit the Frog’s private parts; “Adopted,” which gives away it’s one-note premise immediately by showing a couple with ridiculously protruding nipples; “The Wizard of Oz, Adjusted for Reality,” in which each of Dorothy’s friends is given actual organs freshly ripped from a donor; and “Dracula Meets Magic Johnson,” which is both needlessly cruel and tired. As a dog lover, I also took particular offense to “What Happens If You Feed a Dog Chocolate While Wearing a Tin Foil Hat in a Microwave,” which is fairly self-explanatory and an obvious rip-off of a similar gag in Gremlins.

Now, I have to openly confess that a few other bits some might equally bristle over made me laugh outright. The bulk of these better entries seemed to center around familiar figures — real and fictional — who MacFarlane has fun ribbing and satirizing. Standouts for me in this regard included “Die, Sweet Roadrunner, Die,” in which we learn the sad fate of Wile E. Coyote when he no longer has a purpose in life; “Stuck in a Life Raft with Matthew McConaughey,” which boasts a spot-on impression of the laidback star courtesy of Seth Green; “Jeff Goldblum Wafers,” offers an amusing bit with the stoic actor hawking his own brand of snack treat; “Backstage with Bob Dylan,” which takes well-deserved swipes at not only the incomprehensible Dylan, but also Tom Waits, Popeye and Muhammad Ali; and “Quentin Tarantino Performs a Circumcision,” wherein the director uses the revered sword from Kill Bill to do the deed. Had MacFarlane focused on these celebrity send-ups, I think Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy would have been more successful. But he seems far too preoccupied with potty humor and sex with animals — an obsession that suggests therapy might be in order. Other bits are just tired and lazy — like the titular character in “A Fat Guy Working Out,” who simply arrives at a gym and decides to go home and have a sandwich instead. Wow. I mean that’s about as original as “Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?” And, yes, even that oldie has been pulled out of moth balls and resurrected here with a punch line only a ten-year-old could find remotely funny.