Futurama: Bender's Big Score (2007)

Fresh and Exciting

Boring

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

PLOT: OK, follow this: Space-scammers use commonly-known computer viruses to gain possession of Earth's resources, but more importantly, they also end up taking control of Bender, who goes back in time to steal more of Earth's treasures for the scammers. How so? Fry has the time-travel computer code tattooed on his derriere. This brings in quite a bit of time-paradox situations, some of which are comedic, but one of which is tragic, just so you don't think Groening hasn't got a heart. This bit of romantic story-telling loses some zip because it's quite obvious what's going on. Sorry!THE COMEDY: Alternately slapstick and dry, typical for Groening, which means good. Is it VERY good? It has its moments. I'll say this: there are no really weak jokes, and what's here seems fresh even 10 years after it was made.BOTTOM LINE: Very adequate.

Casual fan of the original series here, always respected the ingenuity and wit of Futurama enough to sit down and give it a spare half hour, so to be blunt, I'm not the breed of obsessive fan you'll find at the conventions.And yet, I too feel disappointed after watching this feature length outing. Like all good science fiction the brilliance of Futurama (the series) was in how the other worldly setting gave enormous capacity to say things about our modern world, funny things and sometimes touching things in the case of the series. That's all gone with the film, instead we're heavily into self-reference territory - making poor jokes about New New York in 3007 rather than funny ones about New York 2007, so one of Futurama's enormous strengths is gone. It's the major gaping hole in this picture.It's variously bad for other reasons, not the least the over-use of the time travel mechanism to tell the story - which is bad news whatever the story. The songs are nowhere near the regular standard of the Simpsons/Futurama stable and cemented with nerry a care for the dialogue surrounding them. The cameos fail too - if Al Gore isn't going to have any funny lines, why not just have an impersonator read them?To sum up, let me explain the shallow depth of the humour we have here. It doesn't spoil too much to inform that in the denouement our villains employ a field of golden death stars. That's a 12-year-old's idea of funny/cool. For the rest of us, it's a cheap, tacky, sloppy solution from the writers to the problem of how to stage a final battle scene.Stick the TV re-runs instead folks.

With the company reformed by the sacking of the executives of the Box Company, Planet Express are delivering to the Nude Beach Planet when they are scammed out of their email addresses and personal details by some naked aliens. As it transpires they scam the company right from under Professor Farnsworth and soon Fry and the others are working for them on a global scam. The scammers search for information leads them to Fry's ass, where he has a tattoo of Bender with an embedded binary code on it. The code opens a time portal through which the aliens send Bender to steal valuable items from history. However, with Professor Fransworth's doom-meter going off the scale, it can only be so long before the universe tells itself apart.When I saw there was a Futurama film I added it immediately to my rental list even though it was not due out any time soon. After this I forgot about it until suddenly it turned up on my doorstep. I mention this so that you do not think I was hyping it in my head in the lead up to watching it – just that I was looking forward to more of the Futurama humour that I had been missing since the series was cancelled. The film starts in a rather clumsy fashion, making references to the series being cancelled that aren't that funny and are just done. I thought things might get better from this point on but sadly and bewilderingly they didn't.The main problem is the plot which, at best, is described as convoluted and at worst is just all over the place. This is not to say that the plots in the series were even anything that good but it was rare for them to actually get in the way of the comedy. Here however so much effort and time is spent on the many uncontrolled plot threads that it appears the writers have had very little time to create the sort of wit that they did in the series. Over the ninety minutes there are about ten good laughs and these are generally asides that the series did better. Of course at times this works but there are just too few laughs across the longer running time to justify it and it is hard not to find yourself sitting with an awkward smile while waiting for the next laugh to eventually come along. The messy plot could have been delivered tongue in cheek to prevent it being a focal point but actually the film does the opposite – pushing itself forward and leaving the asides and general comedy very much in the shade.The Futurama film was understandably hotly anticipated by those who bemoaned the loss of the series; I myself was looking forward to it and ready to forgive it some weaknesses. However the final product is far too weak in terms of laughs and far too messy in regards plotting and delivery. It cannot even sort of fill the running time in regards entertainment value and it would have been much better if it had picked one plot, dropped half of that and kept all the funny asides to make up a twenty minute episode.

Futurama returns with this straight-to-DVD movie and a few others which will be released in time. Futurama was a quality show (including in visuals; the animation is the same here but after all this time it's not as impressive as it used to be). Bender's Big Score has some good, light humour and a few laughs, but it's not close to, say, the Roswell episode, Godfellas or The Sting. Some jokes made me laugh (age jokes about the professor are always good) but others, for example the fly mutant, did nothing for me.The movie begins by using veiled jokes about the TV show being cancelled and then returning; these kind of jokes can be smart, except we've seen them before (for example, the episode SOBs from Arrested Development). We are then treated to a scene at a nude beach with revealing shots of Leela and Amy (we see Leela's buttocks but the rest is covered). However, the movie then introduces its villains- nudist aliens- who are weak and uninteresting. They can sense and actively seek "information," something the writers came up with solely to move the plot along. The aliens also take over Bender by means of a virus and, discovering the secret of time travel written on Fry's body, send Bender to the past to steal treasures. The storyline becomes a little complex with all this time travel, and in addition, one would need to know the TV series to appreciate the movie. The plot is passable, though some of it (the narwhal, for example) isn't compelling or subtle.This DVD also comes with an episode (or would it count as a short film?) featuring the character Hypnotoad. It was a funny joke in the series, but here, he's mostly just staring at you with his hypnotic vision- there's virtually nothing here, so it's pretty much worthless. Altogether, an okay DVD.