Looney Tunes - “Reality Check” and “Stranger Than Fiction” - on DVD

Fans of Bugs and Daffy and the rest of the Looney Tunes gang should avoid these cheap ripoffs like the plague and get the Looney Tunes Golden Collection instead.

And if you’ve been living under a rock and don’t know the classic Looney Tunes stuff, you’d be far better served not using these bastardizations as your benchmark: get the Golden Collection instead.

These two DVD’s are apparently based on Warner Brothers Web Toons, cartoons they put on the Internet for some reason. The cheapness shows; the animation is substandard, the voices uninspired and, the worst sin of all, the writing is unfunny.

Reality Check is a set of short toons spoofing today’s reality TV show trend. It lampoons such outings as “Fear Factor” (the toon’s called “Tear Factor”), “Iron Chef” (“Aluminum Chef”) and more. But don’t expect quality takeoffs or homages such as “The Rabbit of Seville” or “What’s Opera, Doc?” What you get is the lamest of the lame, unfunny garbage that we’re sure has Messrs. Jones, Freleng, Blanc, Stalling and the rest of the “Termite Terrace” geniuses spinning in their graves.

Ditto for Stranger Than Fiction, a takeoff of sci-fi and other "cinefantastique" programs such as “X Files,” “The Island or Doctor Moreau” and “Planet of the Apes.”

Our description of “Reality Check” also applies here: it’s lame, badly animated, and unfunny.

Each disc runs less than an hour, so if nothing else you won't lose too much time watching them...

Audio and video quality are fine, alas, better than the subject material deserves. And both discs come with extras to take some of the sting out of the shorts (which, at about three minutes each, are at least short).

Both discs give you a Flash-based game you can play on a DVD ROM drive (but not in your home theater DVD player). They require you to either install that vile Interactual Player that’s common with DVD-ROM content or that you be computer savvy enough to find the game by exploring the disc. We explored the disc and tried the “Whack an Alien” one that comes with “Fiction” and there’s nothing really wrong with it if you like the “Whack a Mole” type of game.

Other extras include behind the scenes looks at the creation of the Looney Tunes Back in Action video game, commercials, trailers, spots and the like.

If you buy these discs you'll be rewarding what’s really nothing more than a blatant attempt to coast on the work of the Warner giants - while coming up with a product that’s little more than a promo for the upcoming “Looney Tunes Back in Action” live action/animation movie (which, to be fair, looks interesting - and since it's a Joe Dante movie may very well be interesting).

But instead of these tired toons, we recommend rewarding Warners for its truly great animation work, and that’s represented by the Looney Tunes Golden Collection reviewed elsewhere.

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