Futurama: Bender's Big Score

I have just watched this, and was a fan of the original show and am being completely honest here when I say this is not just one of the best animated movies I have ever seen but in fact one of the best movies of any genre I have ever seen.

Unlike the previous Family Guy and Simpsons films (both shows I am a fan of by the way) Benders Big Score seemed to have something extra in it separating it from these two films.

The jokes are great, the music and songs are great, the animation is absolutely superb (the 3d animation looking much better than when the show originally aired) and the story is very smart and also quite touching.

The writing was absolutely superb, cramming in a lot of past characters but not in a way that it felt they had been thrown in for the sake of them being there (as can be noticed Mom does not make an appearance at all) and also adding new call-backs to well known parts from the series.

All in, just superb and make sure you see it one way or another.

Recently, we have seen several full-length features from our favorite TV-series. Family Guy, the movie. Simpsons, the movie.

One thing both of these lacked were going back and not only recalling, but intertwining our favorite side-characters into the plot.

Futurama does this beautifully and we see not only commonly featured side-characters, but characters that hard-core fans will rejoice to see, and I _wont_ give any examples here, because every element of surprise in this movie is what makes it worth watching.

I want to stress that I was very critical to the idea of a movie after such a long pause, and I was a die-hard fan. I signed the online petition all of those years ago when it got canceled (rumor has it all those signatures got printed and transported to box the CEO of FOX into his office, but thats only a rumor as far as I know). Having said this, I want to ensure everyone that even if you go into the movie with high expectations - they will be exceeded.

The plot may seem tangled, but the writers don't leave anything out. Nothing is "forgotten", like in Lost.

If you watched the TV-series, you will love this. If you didn't - tough luck (but you will probably wind up loving it anyway). Its literally a celebration of all of the five seasons aired on television, and its impressive that they did this without repeating anything.

All of the old themes are brought back - its like the show never went off the air. You will straight off the bat be able to re-identify with characters and feel the same way about the show you did all of those years ago.

I haven't seen a story tied up like this in years. The ending is _beautiful_.

This is for the fans.

FUTURAMA - IT JUST WONT STAY DEAD!

I honestly thought this show was dead and would never come back. I only watch the episodes once a year because I don't want to wear out my favourite animated show. To hear of the comeback was great. To have to wait quite a while, not so much. Seeing the final product, a real joy and pleasant surprise.

To be sure, they're a little rusty in places. Some of the lines, especially in the initial third of the film, are questionable and would not have made the final cut under the regime that provided us with the standard series. Hermes, only occasionally an entertaining character, gets too much screen time in a somewhat superfluous side plot featuring his equally unentertaining wife and his irritating enemy Barbados Slim. The villains - the scammer aliens - are disgusting when they should be fearsome. These are the things that lose the film a perfect rating, and are the sorts of niggles I would have expected after such a long hiatus - after all, much of Family Guy's comeback season (number four) is terrible when stacked up to the classic old episodes and a fair few new ones.

But I marvel at what they did right. It retains much of the trademark dynamic writing, taking in some of the same unbelievable and jaw-dropping spins on science and human/alien relationships and making us laugh when explaining away the continuity errors the writers were aware were needed to create an engrossing story.

It makes good use of screen time and never drags it heels which I felt both the Family Guy and Simpsons features did. In the end, both of those other features were such a plot compromise, where you ended up had so little bearing on where you started you had to laugh unintentionally. With this Futurama feature although the plot is bombastic in the greatest sense of the word (like a Queen record for example) it ties up everything I wanted to know in a timely fashion using classic storytelling techniques - and where necessary awesome, seamless and not gratuitous 3DFX - throughout.

Now I've covered the good and the bad, it is time to address the ugly - the backlash. Some have moaned that there isn't enough humour in this feature. To be honest, one of my favourite features of the original series was getting us away from the old cliché which seems to doom a lot of animated shows, namely: Cartoon = Funny. Yes it has several moments of great humour - a nice fifty-fifty of building set pieces and incisive one-liners - but it balances them well with a poignant story which I think they pull off as well as 'The Devils Hands Are Idle Playthings' if you consider that they had to pace it out over nearly ninety minutes which is over four times the length of a standard episode. It's a tall order for almost any script writer used to cramming in the jokes in thirty minutes or less, but these writers don't have a lot of trouble with it.

Another point of contention with the hardcore fans has been what a few of them have called a hopelessly complicated plot. This makes me laugh because the hardcore brethren praise the show constantly for intelligent post-geek humour then with the same breath criticise this new installment for breaking out of the shows comfort zone to use that same intelligence to create a mind blowing story. They must have been watching a different movie because I stuck with almost every twist and turn with awe, and the few I haven't resolved yet will - like all great works of art - reveal themselves with further observation.

In closing - to you hardcore fans who say this isn't a patch on the original episodes, get off your soap box and think yourself lucky there's anything new at all and secondly, I bet you only grew to love those episodes through repeated viewings so stop being so hard on what is a logical continuation of a great premise! 8/10

(NOTE: For those new viewers who missed a lot of the in-jokes that spilled over from the original series and who aren't sure why there is such an abundance of characters, go and buy the Season 1-4 box set from Amazon or eBay and it'll all make perfect sense.)

The first of four Futrama DVDs gets a lot of things right. First of all it remembers why people liked the show in the first place from the oddball space aliens to the shipping romance (kind of an awesome pun for a show about international delivery agents) to the geektastic sci-fi humor and low brow slapstick. It's got everything, again. Only problem is, it's just not up to the series' admittedly high standards. It certainly hits more than misses though and repeat viewings reward with humour you may have missed or not fully been prepared for the first time around.

The plot is hilariously complicated featuring Nudist Spamming Alien Invaders, Time Travel Hijinx and the convoluted relationships between stupid men and the women they love.

Though the box features Bender prominently- our favorite Bending Latino Hearthrob plays second fiddle to a Fry/Leela romance love triangle that comes to a satisfying conclusion. There are so many returning characters from the series' run that very few of them have time to get comfortable before they are whisked away and only a handful have time to actually be funny (though far too many of them bomb) Its actually the little moments that get the biggest laughs.

It's good to have the crew of Planet Express back, even if our second date wasn't quite as hot as our first one.

Managed to see an advance copy of the DVD Screener of this flick. As an original futurama fan, I was eager to see how the TV genre translated as a feature-length.

It's hard not to draw parallels to the Simpsons movie - both are epic, and amusing, with the futurama film being arguably more so.

We're treated with references to all major characters and events past and present from the series, and similar gags that fans will appreciate, but I couldn't help but take the feeling that it was overly ambitious, perhaps sprawling.

The best part of the series is arguably that the episodes were compact, neat, quick witted and very well packaged. Although it's a solid production, it still feels a little confused. 8/10.