Forever Funny is a new DVD collection featuring several classic sitcoms from the past.

It took a long time to sit down and watch seven of the "best" comedies starting from the tarnished golden years of the Honeymooners to the rainy day hijinxs of Dr. Frasier Crane and his Seattle crew. The episodes, which also include I Love Lucy (I didn't), The Odd Couple (not about Bush and Cheney), Taxi (a show you probably couldn't get on a rainy Friday night in the City), The Brady Bunch (a little like the Palin Family) and of course Cheers (a bar where everybody may know your name but not the location of the nearest A.A. meeting). All of these shows put the sit in sitcom.

These are shows where a certain group of individuals, the quirkier the better, relate to dealing with or solving a certain situation that they are faced with in approximately twenty two minutes. If you're Lucille Ball, you dress up as another women, without her front teeth, and pretend to be the date your Ricky has arranged to go out with. Hilarious. If you're Jackie Gleeson you explain to your beloved Alice the virtue of saving for a rainy day instead of keeping up with the Nortons by not buying one of those new-fangled inventions, a T.V. Of course it makes more sense to wait until the 3-D models come out. Actually, a similar excuse was used by my father about why we were waiting to get our first colored T.V. Anyhow, the wacky bunch at the Taxi Garage or the lovable antics of the Brady Family or the amusing exchanges between neat Felix and sloppy Oscar are all fodder for the comedy grinder. It creates a same cookie cutter approach to creating this comedy casserole in hopes of striking ratings gold.

Overall

What is incredible is that all of these shows did just that. They were all successful. Here is your chance to judge for yourself. Comedy and salami have a short shelf life. I'd rate this disc as a three, out of five. These episodes are pretty much mundane, not laugh out loud funny. These are not in the league with the true golden age comedies of the Phil Silvers Show, the many loves of Dobie Gillis, or even Maverick. Now those shows hold up and are still very, very funny.

ComicsOnline gives Forever Funny 3 out of 5 Stars.