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November 30, 2007 > Arts & Entertainment > New Futurama flick scores big with old diehard fans

New Futurama flick scores big with old diehard fans

By Evan Mintz | Thresher Editorial Staff

Good news, everyone, Futurama is back. After four years out of production and headlining Adult Swim, that loveable, subtle, chock-fulla chunks o’ funny is once again showing just how much life in the year 3000 is exactly like life now, but with aliens, robots, nude beaches and Dr. Zoidberg. The series’ first foray back into the world’s televisions and hearts is the feature-length “Bender’s Big Score.”

Futurama follows in the footsteps of that other renewed series, Family Guy, and spends the first few minutes mocking the network executives who cancelled the show. But unlike Family Guy, the joke doesn’t stop at the opening credits. Rather, the executives are punished by being ground into Torgo’s Executive Powder. This serves as a fine reminder throughout the film that those “smartest jokes on TV” you are now enjoying were cancelled by Fox after years of being preempted by professional football, all to make way for such classic shows as “The War at Home.”

The plot starts out a little forced, with the Planet Express gang falling for a bunch of e-mail phishing scams and Bender getting a virus. Alien spammers thus gain control of Planet Express and, through a plot device known as sprungers, detect the key to paradox-free time travel, which is tattooed on Fry’s butt. Since the key can only send people back in time, the spammers send Bender back to steal treasure from throughout history and then wait until the future modern day to give it to them. Thus, Bender’s big score.

But a more appropriate title would be “The Time Travel Trials of Fry and Leela’s Love.” The last episode of Futurama, “The Devil’s Hands are Idle Playthings,” left fans wondering what would become of the warrior cyclopean captain and the 1,000 year old delivery boy. The fact that you can know that yes, they hook up, and not have it be a plot spoiler is certainly praise of the film. And the fact that said hooking up involves a narwhal is certainly proof that Futurama’s silly but sophisticated humor did not wane while it was off air.

Of course, you cannot enter the Futurama universe without encountering President of Earth Richard Nixon’s head, Zapp Brannigan, the Nibblonians, the entity which may or may not be God, the Harlem Globetrotters, Al Gore, and so forth. But as characters go, there is a little too much Barbados Slim and not nearly enough Zoidberg.

Recognizing that some of the show’s greatest moments were the musical numbers, the film does not skimp on singing. But unlike “Robot Hell” or “Stamp it, file it, send it over night,” these songs do not seem to fit in with the rest of the plot, often slowing down the quick-moving cartoon action. On a positive note, one of the songs does finally give some camera time to Kwanzabot and Hanukkah Zombie.

At 80 minutes, “Bender’s Big Score” drags towards the end. But plans are in the works for the full film to be cut into episodes and aired on Comedy Central, turning it into four bite-sized cliffhangers. Combined with the other three upcoming Futurama films, “The Beast with a Billion Backs,” “Bender’s Game” and “The Wild Green Yonder,” that will be enough for a fifth season.

So at a time when The Simpsons is ready to be taken out to pasture, Family Guy doesn’t know the meaning of the word subtlety, and Adult Swim starts to go even further off into the deep end, it is a grand relief to have Futurama back and just as good as ever.

End of article

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