REVIEW: ‘Farzar’ Delivers Comedy At Its Lowest.

Farzar is an animated comedy streaming on Netflix. Prince Fichael has spent his entire life within the domed city of Farzar. Under his father Renzo’s leadership, the human inhabitants have fought an endless battle to keep the vicious alien hordes outside the city at bay. But what if Renzo has been lying to everyone about the history of Farzar?

While the above synopsis may make it sound like this series has some measure of a plot to it, any real narrative is lost in the show’s unending sequence of crude sight gags and perverse, profanity-riddled dialogue. While crude humor and curse words can be used in effective ways, this show never manages to deliver on any of its abundant attempts. It feels like it wants to be Rick and Morty, but what it delivers feels like someone made an AI watching Rick and Morty and then create a new series based on what it had seen. You get the obvious elements of that series with none of its cleverness, leaving you with unlikable characters and endless failures at humor to occupy Farzar’s 10 episodes.

There are even moments when the show tries to weave social commentary into its narrative, but its handling of the issues it takes on ends up in little more than an incoherent mess. The best example of this is one episode where the show looks at Farzar’s immigration policy. While the parallels to modern-day issues are obvious, I couldn’t tell what the show was ultimately trying to say about it. This confused take made it feel like it had been placed there so the show could claim it shines a spotlight on a social issue, as comedy often does, but without actually making any sort of firm stand on it.

The only aspect of Farzar that I can’t fault is the voice acting. The cast as a whole delivers voices that always fit with their characters. Unfortunately, those characters are each their own form of obnoxious. So while the voice acting lands, the dialogue as a whole isn’t worth enduring, leaving even this one highlight a fading ember of quality.

The visual design in this series delivers little to write home about. The general style of the art will feel instantly familiar to any fan of western animated comedy. The only time the series tries to feel particularly creative is in some of its alien designs. However, this creativity is generally aimed at doing something weird with a creature’s genitalia or giving someone a talking taint.

When all is said and done, Farzar fails in almost every way possible. While crude and vulgar humor can be used to great effect in entertainment, it takes a level of skill to implement it that this series is completely bereft of. If I had to choose between passing another kidney stone or watching this again I would choose the kidney stone every time.

Farzar Season 1 is streaming now on Netflix.