DVD review by James Harper

If you are not familiar with "Boondocks", it was originally a comic strip by Aaron McGruder which ran nationally from 1999 to 2006. The comic strip has been collected into several books and is available if you would like to check it out. "Boondocks" featured a black family, the Freemans, including the kids Huey, Riley, and their grandfather Robert. It was a great strip. I love the old comics, "Peanuts", "Krazy Kat", and "Pogo". "Boondocks" held its own quite nicely and was a joy to see each day. I cannot tell you how much I miss it; though "Mutts" does do a good job of catching my attention nowadays. I still gaze at the comics page and wish "Boondocks" would magically appear. I really miss it.

I have not seen the first season of "Boondocks" yet (also available on DVD), but the cartoon series originally was shown in the Adult Swim portion of the Cartoon Network. The second season is now available in DVD and includes two episodes that were not originally aired the first time around as well as plenty of extras.

This is not a cartoon series for kids. There is not a laugh track. The jokes zip by at a blinding speed. This is a hard hitting satire, the vocabulary is sometimes just short of filthy so be please be forewarned if you haven't seen the series yet. But most importantly the series is damned funny. It does not disappoint on any level except for the fact that the episodes are paced to be shown with commercials which sometimes disturbs the pacing of the shows. There are no sacred cows on this show. Everything is ready to be punctured with glee. The writing is top notch, and the performances are wonderful. The animation is by far the weakest part of the show, sometimes we are looking at pictures that don't move at all, but the whole thing is well done, done with care, and is not to be missed.

I sometimes think of entertainment in vaguely mathematical terms. How much enjoyment did you get out of this product for the money you paid for it? By this type of thinking the best two purchases I ever made were records, "Astral Weeks" by Van Morrison and "King of the Delta Blue Singers" by Robert Johnson. I have played each LP more times than I care to count. Seeing Blade Runner in a new 70mm print in a theater with a good sound system would run a close second (I saw a great print of Lawrence of Arabia at the same theater). By this type of yardstick, "Boondocks" is worth every penny, classic priceless stuff. The only thing that has made me laugh harder recently was a Greg the Bunny episode that parodied Natural Born Killers. When Greg went on a killing spree, has killed his own agent, and they are cutting up the agent's body into little pieces in the bathtub with blood spurting everywhere, you hear Greg mutter "Well what do you know, he did have a heart" (I am paraphrasing there). This is that good and better. If you can take the heat, go buy this. This is not for the faint of heart.

You can write to James Harper at movielover77061@yahoo.com