Dana Carvey picks up a paycheck; Netflix drops a handful of cool points.

I quite enjoy the sense of bleh-befuddlement with which Karina at SpoutBlog writes about “comedian” Dana Carvey’s new Web-based show appearing on Netflix called Down In Front With Dana Carvey. She points out that the weekend-streaming show is part marketing, part movie review and sketch comedy and that the show’s first episode is available here on YouTube.

Karina seems a bit nonplussed, a bit underwhelmed by the Carvey piece. I think she’s being kind, because it’s one of the more horrible, pathetic things I’ve ever seen. Outside of Wayne’s World, Carvey certainly hasn’t seen much success in terms of filmmaking - but when he’s tapped to provide film- and pop culture-related comedy and insight, one might hope that the result doesn’t come across as a failed audition tape for David Spade’s failed Showbiz Show. Carvey makes the comment in the episode that watching the gang from the Jackass movies makes him feel old - but I’m feeling pretty creaky myself because I can remember that Dana Carvey used to be funny.

But Netflix’s crimes against movie marketing don’t end there. They’ve created a Dana Carvey-related Flash “game” (click the picture to see it larger, but really why would you?) that users can play in between streaming episodes of Down In Front, and they’ve designed it using the very best Flash techniques from the year 1998. You can find the game here, watch it take about 38 minutes to load, enjoy how it slows every other function on your computer right down to a crawl, and then try to “decipher the collage” as you click on cutesy pictures that either 1) don’t move, 2) move slowly and 4) do very little once they finish moving slowly. And while the creepy animated cutout of Carvey is somewhat amusing - although in a wholly unintended way - perhaps he can be consoled by the fact that it barely resembles him at all. It’s kind of a cross between Carvey and Bruce Jenner, but with extra waxiness.

It’s a miserable effort all around. Why exactly does Netflix need original content like this? The site functions well, it’s innovative and engages its target audience as a community - who needs this kind of shiny object to wave around if they’re going to execute it as dismally as this?