Review of Futurama: Bender's Big Score (2007) by Patrick S — 14 Feb 2010

Long ago, Matt Groening was looking to follow up The Simpsons and he did so with Futurama...and it was awesome HOORAY! Then due to some incompetent meddling it was canceled BOO! Then it found new life on Adult Swim HOORAY! But then Comedy Central bought the rights to air it BOO! But then these movies were coming out and the success of those made it possible for there to be new episodes HOORAY! Then they were going to replace the voice cast BOO! But then it was revealed to be a tactic to get the original voice cast back but probably without much benefits HOO-BOO?! So with the history out of the way let's dig into the first of these Futurama movies Bender's Big Score.

So after two long hellish years of The Box Network denying The Planet Express their delivery licenses until those executive died a horrible death and their ashes used in some sort of powder. So they go off to some nudist planet for a delivery but they get scammed by some nudist scammers. First they use Bender, infected with an obeying virus, to go back in time using some sort of Timesphere to steal every valuable thing in history. Then their scams expand into scamming Earth out of the Earthicans! And it's among other things, one of which is that Hermes is bodyless for a nice chunk of the movie.

So the thing about the movie was that it was and has been chopped into bite-size episodes with a common plot thread. The consequence of that this has a very disjointed feel and it makes it hard to actually invest since another plot thread would take center stage for a time. I mean between the scammers, headless Hermes and Leela's love there's not much time for a connecting thread. Another thing I didn't like was that characters only came back only for us to say "Oh my God, it's so-and-so and what's-his-face!" but then they leave and don't do anything for the plot at all.

But I am very happy to at least see the Futurama gang all back together again. It seems that they never left besides the opening scene with multiple Take Thats against Fox which reminds us that they were canceled. When it does work it works very well, especially the twisty plot of time travel and the ending plot twist which was very sweet and very surprising. And even though I complain about how some characters were useless I am very happy to see them back.

This movie is good for fans and not much else. The voice-acting is great and at time it's very funny. However, it suffers from that clumsy separation device used to chop the movie into a multi-part episodes. I guess the only worth for me is the only worth I see in The Lion King II, a chance to reconnect with friends. But I will watch the other Futurama movies and probably the show despite my indifference towards Comedy Central. I guess what I'm saying is don't expect to much from this.