One of the most incisive and telling jokes in the misunderstood, under-appreciated, highbrow-masquerading-as-lowbrow Idiocracy, from writer-director Mike Judge, is that in a dumbed-down dystopian future the reigning Best Picture Oscar winner is called Ass: The Movie, with all the attendant creativity that title suggests. Which brings us to Fart: The Movie, a flick apparently from 1991 but only now receiving its DVD debut.

Not to be confused with this Fart: The Movie (sigh…), a newer flick from the year 2000 costarring two of Chris Farley’s brothers, Fart (or F.A.R.T., as it’s being billed in some circles, despite its cover art to the contrary) centers on Russell (Joel Weiss), who has but two passions in life: passing gas and watching television. His girlfriend Heather (Shannandoah Sorin) hates his flatulence, but still kind of tolerates him. When Russell falls asleep in front of the TV one night, he dreams a little dream in which all the programming seems to be fart-centric, from infomercials and newscasts to scripted dramas and comedies.

Interestingly, Fart: The Movie is actually co-written by film critic and entertainment journalist Drew McWeeny, of Ain’t It Cool News and now Hitfix, though to be fair it’s hard to cast blame with much of a high-and-hard fastball, since there are eight credited screenwriters, including director Ray Etheridge. (A much better snapshot representation of McWeeny’s work and talents is available here, in the form of his “Masters of Horror” entry Pro-Life, directed by John Carpenter.) The set-up, of course, allows for an endless, sketch-style cycling of flatulence humor, loosely in the vein of something like The Kentucky Fried Movie. Absolutely terrible production value hampers this effort from the start, however, and the jokes are largely stale and predictable as well, never really trying to mine any deeper sense of discomfort about something so, well, universal. Even adolescent boys — the target demographic for this, one presumes — won’t be guffawing much, given the lack of imagination in set-ups and what not.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Fart: The Movie is not presented in smell-o-vision, thankfully, but instead in a fairly (appropriately?) cruddy 1.33:1 full frame transfer, alongside a PCM 1.0 mono audio track. DVD bonus features include only a handful of trailers. If you really must give this a spin, I suppose search on Amazon, or click here to purchase via Half. It will quickly, however, end up back in your unwanted garage sale box of Don “The Dragon” Wilson DVDs and old Doctor Who VHS cassettes, I can assure you. F (Movie) D- (Disc)