Product Details

• Actors: Patrick Warburton, David Burke, Liz Vassey, Nestor Carbonell, William Newman
• Writers: Randolph Heard
• Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround)
• Region: Region 1 encoding (US and Canada only)
  PLEASE NOTE: Some Region 1 DVDs may contain Regional Coding Enhancement (RCE). Some, but not all, of our international customers have had problems playing these enhanced discs on what are called "region-free" DVD players. For more information on RCE, click here.
• Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 2
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Sony Pictures
• DVD Release Date: September 30, 2003
• Run Time: 201 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (103 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B0000AUHQE
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #15,270 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)

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  Movies & TV > Kids & Family > Television > The Tick

• For more information about "The Tick - The Entire Series" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

He's the Wild Blue Yonder, and The Tick is back to show why this outlandishly funny TV series should never have been canceled! After proving his mettle in comic books and animated TV, creator Ben Edlund's blue-insect superhero made his auspicious debut on Fox (in November 2001), portrayed in live action (in a buff-muscled rubber suit) by Patrick Warburton, the popular Seinfeld guest star (as "Puddy"), who instantly perfected the role he was born to play. In his appreciative commentary track, co-executive producer (and Men in Black director) Barry Sonnenfeld calls the pilot episode "the best thing I've ever directed," and it's easy to agree: wide-angle lenses, stylized sets, hilarious dialogue, and a comedically gifted cast make the episode (and the entire series) a perfect summation of Sonnenfeld's wacky style. Edlund concurs, observing that The Tick is "something you get or you don't," and the impatient Fox executives obviously didn't get the show's expert blend of absurdity, stupidity, and good-natured irreverence. They axed the series after eight of these nine episodes aired, only proving that The Tick was too hip for their bean-counting mentalities.

In the title role, Warburton (with highly expressive antennae) hits all the right notes of dimwitted innocence and brute-force gallantry, aided immeasurably by his moth-costumed sidekick Arthur (David Burke), wannabe lothario Batmanuel (Nestor Carbonell), and buxom beauty Captain Liberty (Liz Vassey). Attentive to the more mundane aspects of superheroism, The Tick offers outrageous villains (like the nefarious "Destroyo") and eccentric allies (like Ron Perlman's hilarious "Fiery Blaze") while showing that even crimefighters have everyday problems and desires. Brilliantly conceived and executed, The Tick can now be enjoyed by an audience it never had a proper chance to cultivate. --Jeff Shannon

Product Description

Complete tv series (live action) of the tick

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Don't listen to Cobalt - You get what the box says, January 12, 2004

By	dostatochno - See all my reviews

This show is great, as others have eloquated well enough already. I'm writing this review to tell people not to listen to an earlier reviewer, Cobalt.

First, when you start an episode with a commentary track (from the menu) a prompt comes up for whether or not you want to listen to the commentary.

Second, the ROM-Link that Cobalt said didn't exist DOES exist. There's a program that opens a browser to a web-site with an interview between Barry Josephson and Patrick Warburton. I wish the interview had been on the DVD -- there was plenty of room. I also wish that every episode had had a commentary track, but about 4 or 5 out of 9 episodes isn't too bad.

I don't know where Cobalt got his pirate DVDs, but when you BUY the product, you get what's advertised. More bonus materials would have been great, but that's almost always the case.

Buy this DVD. Barry Josephson and Barry Sonnenfeld have both stated that if sales are sufficient they'll try to get a Tick movie made, and with the success of the MIB films and several other projects, Barry Sonnenfeld is enough of a Hollywood power-house to keep his word.

34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I want to sick The Tick on all those evil doing TV execs, February 28, 2004

By	Robert Moore (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I have argued to friends that TV is a medium with vaster potential than cinema. TV has an extraordinary advantage: more time, time to develop characters, story lines, long story arcs (a 500 minute story will beat a 100 minute story if you have a good script writer involved), and anything else you care to produce. But unfortunately TV as we have known it is largely a dismal affair: television executives. Show me a new show with creative brilliance, great writing, wonderful characters, and intelligence, and I will show you a series that is probably not going to be long in this world. TV execs want series that you can grasp and completely understand while eating a sandwich and drinking a beer, chatting the whole time with friends on the phone.

THE TICK is one of these unfortunate shows that made the mistake of trying to do something original and different, and to do this with tremendous wit and intelligence. I have to be honest: THE TICK never became a great show, but it is obvious that it had the potential for greatness. Shows always take some time to find their feet. BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER didn't become truly great until the second season, and most series follow this pattern. They get better as they go along, and unfortunately THE TICK didn't get to fulfill its potential.

The genius behind THE TICK is Ben Edlund, who followed the cancellation of THE TICK with some utterly brilliant scripts for FIREFLY and ANGEL. Edlund breaks many standard conventions with THE TICK. For one thing, we never really learn all that much about The Tick. Most super hero shows deal at length with back story, but despite having appeared in comics, in an animated series, and a live action series, we know little more about The Tick at end than we did at the beginning. We know that he is a bit of a well meaning dimwit, given to extravagantly complex and high flown sentences, good hearted, virtually indestructible, and apparently about as strong as Superman. He might, in fact, be less vulnerable than Superman, since he apparently doesn't have his own version of Kryptonite. Apart from vulnerability and super strength, however, it isn't clear that he has any other powers. He lives in a city filled with super heroes, but amazingly few if any of them possess their own super abilities. Most achieve their trademarks stunts through gimmicks, like The Tick's sidekick Arthur, who can only fly when opening his moth wings out of a backpack. But The Tick truly is blessed with almost godlike abilities.

Although we only had the show for nine episodes, it was clear that it was going to be a superbly written, well-conceived series. The four performers making up the heart of the show were all great, especially Patrick Warburton in the title role. David Burke was great as Arthur, a nebbish accountant who had Walter Mitty fantasies of becoming a crime fighting super hero, which he largely fulfills by becoming The Tick's sidekick. Liz Vassey plays Janet aka Captain Liberty, who although a very effective hero (in fact, after The Tick, she seems to be the only one of the four who actually does any crime fighting), is beset by a host of personal problems, mostly having to do with men and her willingness to giver herself to them. Nestor Carbonell often steals the show as the would be Romeo and super hero chick magnet Batmanuel. Although apparently bereft of any crime fighting abilities, Batmanuel seems to have become a superhero for the same reason that some guys join bands: the chicks. The quality of the guest stars was consistently superb, with name performers like Ron Perlman (almost unrecognizable under the worst hair do one could ever hope to see on a super hero), Christopher Lloyd as Arthur's boss in the pilot, and Armin Shimerman (who is best known in make up as Quark from DEEP SPACE NINE and out of make up as Principal Snyder from BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER), who is truly unrecognizable as the elderly super villain Destroyo.

The DVD set isn't great, I'll admit, but I think many reviewers exaggerate how bad they are. As far as special features go, I find that I rarely access them. I'll listen to a commentary once, but the actual film or series several times. I do wish they had included more information, and I also agree with some reviewers who wish they would bring out the cartoon series. Nonetheless, I'm grateful that we have the nine existing episodes of what might have become a classic television show.

42 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Wild Blue Yonder, October 11, 2003

By	E. A Solinas "ea_solinas" (MD USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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He has melted viewers' hearts, and from this day forth, he will spread his buttery justice over their DVD players' every nook and cranny. He is the Tick, the mysterious and insane crime fighter who will teach the forces of evil the Lesson... of Metcalfe. (Don't ask, it's a series in-joke)

Mild-mannered accountant Arthur (David Burke) quits his job in order to don a spandex moth suit and fight crime. When he's attacked by inept Communist agents, he's suddenly rescued by... the Tick (Patrick Warburton), a dimwitted innocent who lives in a world of his own. Reluctantly recruited by the Tick as a sidekick, Arthur accompanies his bizarre, superhuman friend through a strange array of crime-fighting scenarios

With the wannabe Latin lover Batmanuel (Nestor Carbonell) and patriotic amazon Captain Liberty (Liz Vassey), the Tick attacks the eccentric evil of the world: fire-spewing Apocalypse Cow, 112-year-old supervillain The Terror, formerly pudgy ballerina Destroyo, Arthur's relatives, and robots who are trying to kill Jimmy Carter. In the meantime, Our Heroes have to deal with dogs, mixed dating (superhero/ordinary person), porn shoots, Captain Liberty accidently killing the poorly-named celebrity-superhero Immortal (in the sack, no less!), the snobby League of Heroes, and the Tick's search for his true identity.

It doesn't get much goofier than "Tick," which spoofs the sort of comic book heroes like Superman and Batman. The villains are over-the-top (check out Destroyo's tanklike exoskeleton), the heroes are more often insane than not, and sidekicks form little clubs to complain about how their heroes treat them. The writing is full of tortured metaphors and strange scenarios (the scene where Captain Liberty and Batmanuel try to explain the Facts of Life to the Tick is priceless -- "blah blah blah").

He's the tiny diamond in a sea of rhinestones, a peach in a barrel of bad apples; Patrick Warburton is outrageously funny as he rolls off the corniest and dumbest dialogue imaginable ("A secret message... from my teeth!") without cracking the tiniest smile. Burke serves as the hapless brain Arthur; Carbonell is quite entertaining as the womanizing Batmanuel, who only fights crime once in the whole series. And Vassey is fantastic as a frustrated 21st-century Wonder Woman who sometimes seems to be the only really sane one there.

All too short and all too sweet, "The Tick" wasn't given the long life on television that it deserved. However, fans can now enjoy the nine hysterical episodes of madness, mayhem, Metcalfe, and steaming hot cups of justice. Long live the Big Blue Lug.