Product Description

Old-school stop-motion animation and fast-paced satire are the hallmarks of this eclectic show created by Seth Green and Matt Senreich. Action figures find new life as players in frenetic sketch-comedy vignettes that skewer TV movies music and celebrity. It's television especially formulated for the Attention Deficit Disorder generation.Running Time: 345 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY UPC: 053939749021 Manufacturer No: T7490

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2181 in DVD
• Brand: Warner Brothers
• Released on: 2006-03-28
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Animated, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French
• Number of discs: 2
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 333 minutes

Amazon.com
Take the stop-motion animated toy action of Kablam! and the pell-mell-paced gag barrage of, say, Laugh-In and you've got the fast and furiously funny Robot Chicken, the addictive addition to Cartoon Network's Adult Swim late-night lineup. Co-created by geek-God Seth Green and filmmaker Matthew Senreich, Robot Chicken episodes run a scant 12 minutes or so, which invites repeat viewings to catch what you missed during the channel-flipping mayhem through TV, movie, and commercial parodies, and non-sequitur blackouts, all acted out by dolls and action figures. To truly appreciate this series, it helps to have a Family Guy grasp on pop-culture trivia, although you need not remember the failed TV series Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place to enjoy "Two Kirks (Admiral James T. and Cameron), a Khan and a Pizza Place." Suffice to say, if you grew up with the Transformers, Voltron, He-Man, and the Care Bears, you'll cackle loudly at Robot Chicken. Each episode is hit and miss, with moments that border on mad genius, such as The Diary of Anne Frank re-imagined as a vehicle for Hilary Duff, or a sketch involving the Tooth Fairy and a little boy whose happiness is short-lived as his parents brutally bicker off camera. It may just live up to its billing as "the darkest sketch in television history."

Other moments to remember: actress Rachael Leigh Cook (voiced by herself) gets carried away during a "This is your brain on heroin" PSA; the shape-shifting superhero adventures of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen; a popsicle-stick adaptation of Debbie Does Dallas; and a Behind the Music devoted to Muppet house band the Electric Mayhem. Robot Chicken's coolness cache extends to its voice cast, including Sarah Michelle Gellar, Family Guy creator Seth McFarlane, Mark Hamill, and Macauley Culkin. This two-disc set hatches a wealth of archival goodies, including deleted scenes and "animatics," behind-the-scenes footage of animation meetings, and alternate audio takes. Robot Chicken is a fowl ball! --Donald Liebenson

Customer Reviews

Awesome show!


This show is an ingenius and hilarious collection of skits that parody pop culture of recent and many years before with excellent stop-motion animation and clay animation done by action figures and puppets. It is created by Seth Green and Matthew Senreich as it brings toys to life on the small screen in ways you can't imagine. This is one of AdultSwim's most popular and creative shows as it's sort of a animated version of SNL, MADTV or Monty Python but made for adults even to the child of the 80's and 90's who can recongize the references and characters.

On this first season we got 20 episodes with nifty skits like my personal faves "Great Pumpkin" with Charlie Brown and the gang getting murdered by the one creature Linus worships so much on Halloween, the "Smurfs" parody on "Se7en" and " A look at where is Dr. Teeth and The Band". I also love how they would do a "Diary of Ann Frank" starring Hillary Duff, this is one of the funniest shows i've ever seen even to Retro people as well.

This DVD contains a bunch of great extras like deleted scenes including an extended version "Smufs Se7en", deleted animatics, photo gallery, animation meetings, alternate audio takes, Promos, Bumps, Commentaries, Animatic to episode comparision, wire comparisions, behind the scenes and Sweet J presents skits.

Bawk-bawk-WOW!!
Indeed, that is what you will say, if you've never seen Robot Chicken before. On the surface, each episode seems like crudely done stop motion animation--but delve a little deeper. The real magic is in the tightly written (and gloriously gloriously violent!!) episodes that revel in the non-sequitor and the from way way out of left field references you may pick up on. A typical episode has two main running stories that last about 3-5 minutes with a veritable crapload of Laugh-In style gags thrown in. If you are expecting high-brow humor, it will be there, but this show is more akin to the Family Guy with jokes that run the gamit of being surreal and obscure to very crude (fart/vomit/and sex scenes abound). Although I'm not partial to fart jokes, there is a really good skit about what happens when Mikey gets ahold of a pop rocks and soda. My favorite skits: The Great Pumpkin Skit--Linus's reaction shot after he conjures his pumpkin has to be seen to be believed! The Smurf murder mystery--complete with all those annoying Smurfin' references The Bloopers--these can get very out of control! As for extras, each episode has a commentary track to it. In fact, my advice is to watch two or three episodes one day and then watch them again the next day with the commentary playing. It's not exactly revelatory, but Seth and Matt should get their kudos for giving each episode (all 20 of them!) their personal attention. The Pros for this set: deleted scenes for many of the skits, uncensored puppet violence, and a very reasonable price tag (I paid $13 and it was worth every cent!) The Cons: the commentary tracks tend to ramble and not make much sense sometimes; the worst: the censored dialogue--I don't know if the bleeping was intended by Seth and Matt, but I was expecting an uncensored version like what Family Guy gives you: I mean, come one, it would have been worth it to hear Pokemon really going off.....

Another Awesome DVD
this dvd set is great, the price is the best anywhere, even better than the price of both seasons together at this site (season 1 and 2 seperate are cheaper thant hte box set). It is so funny becuase its so fast paced, joke joke joke. they make sure they do the best work even if its a 15 min show. I was totally hooked and bought both seasons after just seeing 1 eposode! Of course not having the Star Wars Episode in this sucks, but the star wars DVD that just came out is awesome itself, and has lots of extras to make it worth getting alone.