Futurama: Bender’s Big Score (2007)

Futurama: Bender’s Big Score (2007)

Directed by: Dwayne Carey-Hill

Starring: Billy West, Katey Sagal, John Di Maggio

That’s right, the first of four Futurama movies coming soon! Thanks to the DVD sales and the return of awful series like “Family Guy,” Futurama’s making it’s comeback to the world of new episodes! Is the magic still there? To be honest, I’ll wait until The Beast With a Billion Backs (June 24) before I decide. Can you tell that I’m going through my videos now? Haha.

We rejoin the intrepid crew of Planet Express four years after being cancelled, and boy are they angry about it. The entire first segment is striking back at Fox for cancelling the series and grinding the executives into a fine powder that has an unlimited number of uses and which continually pops up throughout the rest of the movie. The general gist is that there are three nudist aliens (led by Nudar, of course. What else would you call a nudist alien?) who are master e-mail scammers. Actually, they’re not any better than the pros over in Nigeria in present day, but they’re much more successful because there wouldn’t be much of a story if nothing ever happened.

Everyone gets fooled by these scammers, and when they take over Planet Express, they find something strange: A tattoo of Bender’s smoking face on Fry’s ass. Even more remarkably, inside the tat is hidden a binary code that allows people to travel back in time! The scammers use Bender to travel back and steal all sorts of valuable objects for them, and there’s this really confusing time travel plot and… ugh, why did they decide to bring Futurama back with time travel? I can think of one movie that does time travel right, and that’s Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.

Overall, there’s a huge feeling of bowing to the fans in Bender’s Big Score. There are a ton of references and guest appearances of things from previous episodes that seem incredibly out of place and unnecessary. I’m really hoping that this was just something they did for the first movie to appease all the rabid fans out there and that it won’t continue through the rest of the movies. Does this detract from the movie? A little. A very little. I’m a fan, and I laughed at the little references, but it really did give the whole thing a forced feeling to it. Overall, I’d say that it’s as good as an average episode of the show. If they didn’t have the damn time travel and the fan service, I’m sure it would’ve ended up feeling more like the original show. I’m still holding out for the next ones…

Anyway, despite my griefs, is this worth watching? Absolutely! If you haven’t seen 80% of the episodes of Futurama, though, I wouldn’t recommend it. I’d say to rent the series on DVD or catch it on Comedy Central before you watched this movie. It really is not a self-encapsulated story, and it doesn’t introduce or develop any of the characters (and introduces a lot of minor characters with no background unless you’ve seen the show), choosing instead to use it’s time on plot. Overall, the fact that it’s new Futurama was enough for me to go out and buy it on the first day it was out. If you love Futurama, you’ve already seen this. Or you’re dead to me.