America's Funniest Home Videos: The Best Of Kids & Animals

AMERICA'S FUNNIEST:BEST OF KID This three-disk compilation includes as many home videos of kids and animals as you could ask for, including baboons breaking into a car, a frog climbing on a baby's head, a dog peeing on a bride's gown, several videos of kangaroos and wallabies kicking people in the groin (there's a whole subgenre of people being hit or bitten in the groin by balls, goats, geese, etc.), an orangutan trying to tongue-kiss a giggling girl, a bicyclist being pursued by a giraffe, and so much more. And let's face it, lowbrow though it may be, a lot of these videos are funny; when a cat leaps out of the bushes like an attack commando and lands smack on a toddler's face, it's just funny. It's also worth noting that America's Funniest Home Videos is the most racially integrated show on television, thanks to the democracy of home-video technology.

Aside from the sheer volume of video clips, The Best of Kids & Animals contrasts the styles of former host Bob Saget and current host Tom Bergeron. Saget was a deeply conflicted man: In his eyes lurks a mixture of self-loathing that he'd stooped so low and glee that he was being paid to do something so completely effortless. Bergeron, on the other hand, is at one with his job; it's as if he can't imagine a more worthy task than introducing a video in which his head has been superimposed over that of a man bitten on the hindparts by a camel. On the Battle of the Best, in which the best videos of the past 12 years (though there are some excellent ones from the 2004 finale, included on the All Animal Extravaganza disk, that somehow didn't make the cut--oh, the injustice of the world), Bergeron moderates a panel of D-list celebrities with Buddha-like serenity, introducing a dog with a barking butt as if it were a presidential address. Inner peace or amoral cynicism? Decide for yourself. --Bret Fetzer