Seth MacFarlane Movies

This Family Guy spinoff follows Cleveland Brown, who has moved from Quahog, R.I., to Stoolbend, Va., where he becomes a family guy himself -- settling down with his high-school flame and her unruly kids, as well as his own teenage son, Cleveland Jr. ~ Paul Droesch, All Movie Guide

Family Guy and American Dad creator Seth MacFarlane puts pup culture into a parody blender with this raunchy, twisted internet series that's too outrageous for network television. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Created by Seth MacFarlane of Family Guy fame, the weekly Fox animated sitcom American Dad! peered into the home life of a dedicated but thickheaded secret agent. Jut-jawed protagonist Stan Smith was a troubleshooter for the CIA who, by his own declaration, would "stop at nothing" to protect his country -- and in proving this he invariably brought down a great deal of pain and embarrassment to his family. In an all too typical example, Stan had a cute habit of shooting first and asking questions later, which wreaked havoc on faulty household appliances and the like. The Smith family included wife Francine, who had a tough time hiding her drug-addicted past from her straight-arrow husband; daughter Hayley, a community-college coed who'd gone over to extreme left-wing liberalism just to spite her dad; and dorky son Steve, who went to great and pathetic lengths to "be cool." Also members of the household were Roger, a squid-like, Paul Lynde-sounding space alien who'd been hiding out in the family's home ever since Steve rescued him from Area 51; and Klaus the goldfish, who as a result of a misfired mutation experiment spoke in a sinister Peter Lorre-ish German accent. The first cartoon series to truly reflect the singular paranoia of the post-9/11 era, American Dad! premiered February 6, 2005, right after Fox's telecast of the Super Bowl (the same route previously traveled by MacFarlane's Family Guy). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Meeting Sookie's old friend Joe (Joe Fria) at a business seminar, Lorelei (Lauren Graham) is frightened off by Joe's incessant shop talk -- and the very married Sookie (Melissa McCarthy) is suddenly stuck with an unwanted suitor. Later, Lorelei is called as a character witness when her mother Emily (Kelly Bishop) is sued by her former maid Gerta, who finds it unfair that she was fired for walking too loud. And elsewhere, Rory is caught in the crossfire as Paris (Liza Weil) and Francie (Emily Bergl) bicker over the particulars of the Chilton Senior Prom. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Twenty-one new, non sequitur-laden episodes are dished up by series creator Seth MacFarlane for the third and final Fox network season of the cartoon weekly Family Guy. Things start off with the series' first two-parter, in which the Griffins' pet dog, Brian, runs away from home and ends up in Hollywood directing porn movies. Later, a hurricane in Quahog brings a new British Invasion in its wake; Mr. Death, who'd been a special guest star the previous season, makes a return appearance with his mother in tow (not to mention Peter Frampton); and Meg gets a TV job forcing her to work with über-nerd Neil, but at least gets to rub caricatured shoulders with Hugh Downs and Abe Vigoda. In another story development, Peter loses his job when his boss dies in a freak accident (choking to death on a dinner roll), allowing our hero to pursue his life's ambition as a knight in a Renaissance fair -- and when that fails to pan out, he comes up with a new life's ambition and goes fishing. Elsewhere, malevolent infant Stewie tries to cook up yet another foolproof murder scheme when Peter and Lois decide to have another baby; a case of mistaken identity thrusts the Griffins into both the Witness Protection Program and a Civil War reenactment; a session with a local baseball team transforms Peter into a rara avis -- a black white man; paraplegic policeman Joe gets some unexpected assistance when he enters the Special Olympics; Stewie throws a tantrum and ends up winning a theater audition, just as sister Meg begins dating a nudist; and as another of the family's impulsive trips to Europe is sidetracked to Saudi Arabia, mom Lois reveals a long-ago liaison with KISS lead singer Gene Simmons. In the series finale, the Griffins respond to viewer mail by staging their own iconoclastic versions of The Little Rascals and a certain mutant-superhero movie blockbuster (An additional episode, "When You Wish Upon a Weinstein," was never telecast on Fox due to its "controversial" nature, and remained unseen until it was shown on cable's Cartoon Network two years after it was filmed). Despite the anguished moans of the series' millions of fans, Fox decided to pull the plug on Family Guy at the end of season three. However, the series was due for a spectacular rebirth that would put a phoenix to shame. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Created by 25-year-old wunderkind Seth MacFarlane, the weekly, half-hour cartoon series Family Guy shamelessly -- and hilariously -- exploited the nothing sacred, anything goes TV animation field fostered by such earlier trailblazers as The Simpsons and South Park. Set in Quahog, a suburb of Providence, RI, the series' main characters were the Griffin family: dad Peter, an impulsive fathead who worked at a local toy factory and who turned "dysfunctional parenting" into an art form; mom Lois, a frustrated social climber who bore the humiliation heaped upon her by her family in quiet desperation; 16-year old daughter Meg, as high-strung and neurotic as they came; 13-year-old son Chris, whose oafish slothfulness gave other slackers a bad name; and little Stewie, a sinister-looking one-year-old infant with an erudite vocabulary, the mind of a serial killer, and the ambitions of Genghis Khan. By contrast, the family's talking, martini-imbibing dog, Brian, was a monument to well-adjusted normalcy. The Griffins' neighbors included whiny, self-loathing Cleveland, paraplegic police officer Joe Swanson, and sex-obsessed Glen Quagmire.
The tone of the series was established by its debut episode, "Death Has a Shadow," originally telecast just after Super Bowl XXXIII on January 31, 1999, in which most of the running time was devoted to the gimlet-eyed Stewie's elaborate efforts to murder his mother! Making its formal debut over the Fox network on April 6 of that same year, the series followed the Simpsons pattern of irreverent, iconoclastic plotlines, cutting-edge, borderline obscene dialogue, and wildly non sequitur pop-cultural references. However, Family Guy went far beyond Simpsons or any other prime time cartoon of its era in its pursuit of the bizarre and the grotesque, and also heaped on more culture-shock gags, in jokes, and obscure movie and literature references than any other series in living memory. It was not an unusual sight to see Peter and Lois don S&M gear before going to bed, or for a pimple on Chris' cheek to suddenly develop a diabolical mind of its own, or for Stewie and Brian to embark upon European vacations at the drop of a hat, or for Meg to watch her slumber party morph into a ribald MTV-esque reality series. Finally, name another series of the era in which the head of the family would kidnap Pope John Paul I in broad daylight just to prove a point to his father, or a mob boss would demand that the family take a petulant "wiseguy" to the movies, or Mr. Death (skull, scythe, and all) would break his bony leg in the family living room and be forced into a Man Who Came to Dinner extended stay-over, or a disgruntled paterfamilias would try to figure a way out when actor James Woods insisted upon being his best friend forever! (Woods was one of several celebrities who provided voices for their "surprise" appearances. Others included Adam West, Victoria Principal, Gene Simmons, Erik Estrada, and Randy "Macho Man" Savage).
If ever a cartoon series was creator-driven, Family Guy was it. Not only did Seth MacFarlane produce, direct, and write the series, but he also provided most of the character voices. The series also eminently qualified as a "cult favorite," in that it attracted a huge following of fiercely loyal fans but never did particularly well in the ratings. This was largely due to the cavalier attitude of the Fox network, whose programmers repeatedly shuttled the series from one "sudden death" timeslot to another and pre-empted it at the slightest opportunity. It was not until Fox canceled the show and it was picked up for rerun play on cable's Cartoon Network that Family Guy truly built an audience -- an audience so large that the show regularly out-rated such late night network attractions as Jay Leno and David Letterman in several major markets. Even more successful was the show's first DVD release in 2003. So many units were sold in so short a time that, beginning in the spring of 2005, Fox restored Family Guy to its prime time schedule with brand new episodes -- the first instance in which a series made a network comeback solely on the basis of its home-video popularity. Seth MacFarlane immediately responded to this move by brazenly biting the hand that fed him, poking cruel fun at the hidebound "standards and practices" people at Fox and having Peter Griffin rattle off a list of all the failed Fox series in the past two decades.
If MacFarlane seemed unhibited during Family Guy's original run, he absolutely ran wild in the "new" version, merrily tossing in random running gags and inside jokes that only the series' most encyclopedic of fans could fully appreciate. (On one episode, for example, the plot stopped dead in its tracks for an extended fist-fight sequence that had been carried over from the previous week!) While many non-fans were turned off by the excesses of the renewed Family Guy, there were millions of other viewers who swallowed those excesses whole and demanded even more. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Although the first season of the doggedly irreverent animated half-hour Family Guy didn't exactly set the ratings on fire, the series' devoted fan following was sufficient for Fox to order 21 new episodes for a second season. The opener finds the dysfunctional Griffin family developing even worse financial sense than normal when they inherit a mansion. Later on, Peter Griffin is forced to kidnap Pope John Paul II to prove something to his hyper-judgmental dad (voiced by Charles Durning); New Years Day of 2000 proves to be an apocalyptic experience as the Griffins rummage through the ruins of a bombed-out Quahog, RI -- and end up crossing paths with Randy Newman and the cast of Dallas; a quickie European vacation awakens the carnal lust in Brian the dog; and Norm MacDonald provides the voice of Mr. Death, who proves to be a crabby house guest when he breaks his skeletal leg in the Griffin living room (this is the one where Peter develops a "fatty corpuscle"). Also: Lois Griffin directs a community production of The King and I which devolves into a garish "leg show" and an obscene example of egos run amok; Murphy Brown's Candice Bergen and Faith Ford provide voices for an episode in which Peter gets in touch with his feminine side; daughter Meg's slumber party morphs into the new 24-hour TV reality series "The Real Griffins" (even though the "real Griffins" are replaced by celebrity actors); Brian and malevolent infant Stewie Griffin go into Hope-Crosby mode on "Road to Rhode Island"; Peter poses as a high school student, basking in the popularity he'd never enjoyed during his actual teen years; the Mob makes the family an offer they can't refuse (or make sense of) in an episode featuring the voice of The Shield's Michael Chiklis; son Chris needs liposuction, but it's Peter who gets the treatment, much to the jealous Lois' dismay; and Luke Perry sues Peter for defamation of character and bad writing. Topping off the season, father-and-son day for Peter and Chris turns sour when Peter chooses someone else's son! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide