Robot Chicken is a stop-motion animated series created by Seth Green (the guy who does the voice for ‘Chris’ in Family Guy, played ‘Scott’ in Austin Powers and ‘Oz’ in Buffy). It is part of Adult Swim.
So what’s it about?
It is called Robot Chicken because it is about a dead chicken which is reanimated by a mad scientist and then forced to watch endless bad television! It has been around since 2005 and is now in its fourth series, which is available to buy in the UK.
Sketches
The show flicks between lots of different sketches, some lasting only a few seconds. There are loads of different dolls and action figures used in the sketches.
Being oddball comedy some of it is pretty messed up! In one episode there is a beached whale. A girl comes up to it and says “Oh no you poor whale”, the whale makes noises and subtitles show up, saying “Come Closer”….”So I can rape you”. And that’s it. This is the sort of humor the show!
The one I remember being my favourite was called ‘The Humping Robot’ which was a game on the Wii, where eventually it ends up with a mum, dad, son, daughter and a vicar all doing humping movements. It made me laugh so much! There is also a very funny movie sketch called ‘The Humping Robot’ with Daniel Day-Lewis and Kate Winslet which is brilliant!
There is also some very funny stuff with the smurfs and various Hanna-Barbera characters. Although these are some of my favourites I don’t want to put too many spoilers in this review” But you can be sure of lots of celebrities, TV shows, and many cartoon characters that you will know.
Episodes
As with most Adult Swim shows the episodes are fairly short so they can fly by. At the end of some of them the content was so crazy the show would end and I would actually think in my head “what the hell just happened”, I went through a whole episode of random crazy stuff not knowing what the hell was going on.
DVD Features
There are also ‘Deleted Scenes’, ‘Deleted Animatics’, ‘Video Blogs’ and a few other extra features.
Who’s It For?
If you are into the oddball comedy genre you will certainly love Robot Chicken. If you are a fan of shows like Family Guy and Futurama you should check it out, and those who love other Adult Swim shows like Harvey Birdman and Titan Maximum will definitely enjoy it.
Conclusion
Given the nature of comedy I can certainly see why Robot Chicken wouldn’t be to everyones taste! But if you like oddball comedy you are going to love this. It is made in a funky way and has some crazy humor. Overall I liked it and think it is well worth checking out.
Post first published 07 September 2010.
About Author: Chris. I am a full-time writer, blogging on a variety of websites. I love comedy and enjoy posting about it every week.
