Game Stooge

REVIEW: Futurama: Bender’s Big Score! (Film)

• Scribbled on November 29th, 2007 by Jonah Falcon
• Filed in Off Topic, Reviews

Two years after having been cancelled, Futurama returns in the form of the first of four direct-to-video films, Bender’s Big Score. The big question is, after two years of hiatus, does the show retain its cutting edge humor and its care for its characters?

The answer is, depressingly, not really.

After a perfunctory introduction of the characters, and severely cheesy self-referential humor (The Box Network, with a flicking B that resembles an F, firing Planet Express?), the group finds themselves re-hired after the Fox Box Network themselves are fired for incompetence then ground into a fine pink powder (sigh), where they visit a Nudist Planet and are scammed by a trio of naked aliens into giving the company away. A mysterious tattoo on Fry’s ass reveals the secret to time travel, where a virus-controlled Bender is commanded into stealing treasures from the past. Meanwhile, Leela is entranced by a bald medic named Lars after Hermes’ body is crushed in a limbo accident. The convoluted plot also finds time paradoxes abounding as multiple Benders, Hermes and Frys appear through time travel.

Without giving away too much of the plot or spoilers, the normally 24 minute show struggles to maintain material in its 88 minute running time, with a lot of scenes falling flat. For fans, the film commits the crime of devaluing or ignoring past shows, or ignoring continuity. Classic shows such as Jurassic Bark, Luck of the Fryish and The Devil’s Hands are Idle Playthings are destroyed - for example, the film’s use of Nibblonians is criminal in turning them into hapless idiots, while Yancy’s son Philip J. Fry is consigned to anonymity via a time paradox when an alternate Fry ends up remaining in the 2000’s (the young Fry never gets the 7 leaf clover). Part of this is due to the lengthened format, as the film tries to do too much to justify its running time. The shorter television episodes were forced to condense and sharpen the writing; the scatterbrained nature of Bender’s Big Score! is the result of the lack of focus.

The film occasionally shows some of the show’s brilliance with a major plot twist close to the end when one character is revealed as someone else, which rivals some of the sentimentality of the aforementioned episodes, or the sly references such as the hysterical explanation of the UFOs that destroy New York while Fry was in cryogenic freeze during the very first episode. Unfortunately, the final, ill-advised joke destroys the mood of the ending - again, a result of the writing trying to expand the running time. The film also seems to treat its viewers at times like idiots, almost like a typical Box Network show - an unforgivable and deeply ironic act by David X. Cohen and company.

Hopefully, the next three direct-to-video Futurama films will be closer to the level of the series episodes, or Futurama may find itself killed by the Box Network. Again.