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| Monday, January 28, 2008 03:51 PM |
| On the Viewer - Futurama: Bender's Big Score |
 by Fëanor |
One of my favorite cartoons of all time, Matt Groening's hilarious sci-fi/action comedy for geeks, Futurama, has returned! Sort of. This is the first of a series of straight-to-DVD Futurama movies. It picks up where the series left off, with an amusing introduction that talks about the show being cancelled and coming back without actually talking about the show being cancelled and coming back. It tells a surprisingly sad and romantic story about Fry's endless love for Leela, against the backdrop of evil alien scammers using time travel and their control over Bender to steal Planet Express, and ultimately pretty much everything else on the entire Earth. And there's also the saga of Hermes and his attempts to get a body for his decapitated head and thus steal his wife back from the nefarious Barbados Slim. The filmmakers also manage to work in cameos by, and/or references to, nearly every character who ever appeared in the series - including Al Gore, Scruffy, Clamps, Richard Nixon's head, Elzar, Zapp Brannigan, and Robot Santa.
It's a film with many funny and clever moments, but I found myself mostly frustrated and disappointed by it. It just didn't seem funny enough. And I was annoyed by the melancholy nature of the main storyline. But my brother assures me the film gets much better on repeat viewings, so maybe I need to give it another chance. |
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