Customer Reviews

Rex the Runt - The Complete Collection

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I discovered "Rex The Runt" on the Aardman Animations webpage about two weeks ago... and was instantly hooked.

The characters (our doggie hero, Rex the Runt, his live-in canine friends Bad Bob and Wendy, and Rex's dog, Vince, who has Random Pavarotti Disease) are clay figures like Nick Park's Wallace & Gromit, but more twisted and ... slightly abstract. Their object during any given episode is to have an adventure, any adventure, and this they do with relish. For instance, in "Holiday In Vince", they take a journey through Vince's brain in a shrunken submarine; in "Easter Island", the gang's helicopter crash-lands on an island inhabited by a group of aliens masquerading as Easter Island Heads who kidnap Rex and take him to the planet Thribb; and in "Stinkey's Search for a Star", the plucky dogs find themselves at the mercy of rock-and-roll fame and fortune as they form the group "Rexy Music" to win money to prevent their gas from being cut off!

Several well-known British folks do the guest voices, including Eddie Izzard's terrific turn as the Easter Island Heads (ALL of them). The duel DVD set includes all episodes from both seasons of "Rex", and includes the trailer for the second season, revealing photos of Wendy during a "glamour shoot" and a DVD-ROM feature.

For some, the humor of "Rex The Runt" may take a second or third viewing to get. However, it's well worth it. The only side effect is ... Random Pavarotti Disease ... but I've learned to live with it ... :)

make the most of it, folks! cos over here, where it was made, we can't get this for love nor money. a fabulously surreal romp through the most twisted minds at Aardman, this is far for charismatic than most of their work. forget Wallace & Gromit (admit it, you only watched it for Gromit anyway), this programme doffs its hat to every great comedy series. a must see. if at first you don't get it, try a second time. once you're there, you'll never want to leave.

I highly recommend this DVD. I have seen the DVD, plus watched a ton of episodes on Atomfilms.com. This series is the greatest stop motion animated series ever created!!!! Its far beter and more complex then Wallace and Gromit, or any of the other terrible stop motion shows like Celebrity Deathmatch, PJ's, or Gary and Mike. This show is amazing!!!! It is hilarious dry humor at its best!!! The sets are great, the designs are great, the animation is excellent, the voice acting is incedible...great characters, enjoyabke adventures! What else do you want!! This show should be played in the states for sure. Only Aardmsn animation seem to know the secret formula for producing a show that is adored by youngsters yet still highly appealing to adults! Great stuff!!

From the British isles comes this clever claymation series. The humor, while still being a bit British, is very clever and your cheeks will hurt after smiling through the whole thing. The characters all have their own eccentricities that play well into the plot and always bring about an unexpected, but delightful ending. If you are a fan of the series from Atomfilm - then you understand the strong desire to own this and watch it non streaming. Buy it - YOU WILL NOT BE DISSAPOINTED!

You don't have to be on drugs to enjoy these quirky and often bizarre vignettes. An entertaining mixture of British comedy and the warped minds of Aardman animators. These are definitely not for children. It's nice to come home from work and relax in Rex's world, sharing in their adventures. Be careful, though, Random Pavoratti Disease is contagious.

Well this one will not be everyones taste, but if you like the aardman stuff your like it. its very funny and a little bit raw.

The review above stinks. It's that simple. Humor--especially absurd humor--is not simply a matter of taste (as someone else who dislikes this DVD collection here notes), it involves a lot of other things--like intelligence, a sense of irony, a sense of whimsy, etc. Everyone on the planet knows that Americans are worst at these things and they're including even those cocky swaggering Americans who don't like cocky and swaggering George Bush and think the world hates us only because of him. Believe me, Europeans, for example, are as annoyed by self-righteous American anti-smokers, in-your-face feminists, vegetable-Aryans, New Agers, and all their ilk. They hate all of us and justifiably. The modern Ugly American is just somebody of any political persuasion who thinks they have all the answers.

Rex the Runt got plenty of complaints in the UK and that shows how badly the Empire has fallen to our own level, largely through too much close association. The humor here is straight from Goon Show, Moore and Cooke, and Python absurdism--no reason Brits should have had trouble with this unless they were all young, wore ball caps, and listened to rap. For Americans, it's in the same class as Ernie Kovacs and Bob and Ray, Green Acres, Get a Life, maybe Firesign Theatre too--long-dead dinosaurs from an age when Americans could actually be kind of cool now and then. Gradually since about 1962 Americans have been more and more nothing but humorless putzes; humor--what there is of it--serves as little more than a venting system for endless social stresses and discomforts (95% of all sitcoms--go ahead, look for yourself), or it's just badly concealed cruelty.

I bought these, watched a few, and invited a diverse bunch of friends over to watch. Everybody loved them and they were surprised they'd never encountered them before. We all talked about it and pretty much agreed with what I wrote above--too good for us. Get real, Mr. Solomon. The dialogue is supposed to be awkward, the animation is supposed to be a bit lumpy. The few times moments in the show don't work is when it tries to stoop to conquer. Like most modern Americans you associate quality with high surface sheen and don't get the sometimes irony of low tech.

THIS is definitely an acquired taste; you either "get" this stuff, or you don't. "Rex the Runt" is lunatic, stream-of-consciousness humor, involving four clay-mation dogs. The stories don't make any sense at all, and they're not meant to; they ramble wildly from one inside-joke plot line to the next. It took me several episodes to get into the weird sense of humor in this series, and some of the jokes become funny through repetition....for instance, Rex's sidekick, "Vince". (He likes jam, Tuesdays, and has Random Pavarotti Disease; he breaks into a brief operatic interlude at the slightest provocation. Oh, and did I mention he falls over a lot??) Just go into this with the knowledge that it's screwball and non-sensical, and you just might enjoy it. Definitely not for the serious-minded.