Dumbland

Best guess, this is David Lynch’s way of showing how crude and tasteless many modern animated shows are. Maybe by creating one of these shows at the truly lowest possible denominator, Lynch is trying to make an artistic comment on what the American public freely accepts as quality entertainment. Shows such as Beavis and Butt-Head have been mocked for their poor animation quality. South Park has frequently been mentioned when strong language is the topic of discussion. This series hits an all-new low in…both categories, not to mention those of extreme violence and gross-out humor. This show truly is the lowest possible artistic medium… and it is that way on purpose. By showing us just how utterly wretched these shows could be, Lynch is sending a powerful message to the ever-growing segment of the American population that thinks it is “cool” to be ignorant; as well as to those networks that put such shows on the air.

While I do not completely agree with his beliefs, he still makes a very valid point. This is a very shrewd way of making an editorial comment, but that doesn’t make this disc any more pleasant to watch. Watch this disc if you must, but I beg of you, please, please do not buy it. You will never watch it a second time. In fact, though the entirety of the disc only lasts 35-minutes, you may not even make it that far the first time through.

Audio

The audio levels on this disc vary wildly from line to line. While some lines of dialog are so low that you will have to turn your volume way up to hear them, the very next line will be painfully loud for no apparent reason. Not only is this annoying, but it wreaks havoc on home theater systems. If you ust watch this disc, the best advice that I can give you is to watch it on standard-definition television, an just use the simple TV speakers. The sound will be just as clear, and the wild volume changes won’t wear on your patience as much.

Video

Not only is this show presented in full-screen, but it is shown in a “boxed-in” full screen format. There are the traditional black bars on the top and the bottom of the image that usually show up with widescreen films, and there are bars on the left and right sides as well. This serves to make the images extra-small, and made me feel like this series should have been released as a series of web clips instead of investing capital in a DVD. The extremely poor black and white animation is also quite jerky, but most of that is due to the fact that it was drawn that way. With a release like this one, there is just no reason to invest any time or money in a quality transfer.

Special Features

It’s not always a bad thing when a disc comes without extras. Of course, none of Lynch’s DVD releases have extras, as he feels that the end product should speak for itself, and whatever it means to the viewer is what it actually means. In this case, I’m just happy that there wasn’t any more to sit through than there is.

Conclusion

Here’s the conundrum; the very fact that this show is so unbelievably horrible is proof that David Lynch has successfully made his point. It is truly bizarre that a program so utterly distasteful as this one can promote intellectual discussions, but it may very well do just that. See this if you must, but I really can’t think of a single reason why anyone, anywhere should purchase this horrible disc. I wouldn’t take this title home with me if it were free. In fact, I’m going to discard my review copy as soon as humanly possible.