After the renewal of Family Guy, many have wondered if the other FOX-cancelled animation will return… and Futurama is finally back. In the form of 4 movies, that will be divided up and aired as individual episodes (just like Family Guy’s direct-to-DVD movie was).
Futurama: Bender’s Big Score starts with the gang learning that they have been cancelled by the FOX BOX network. But soon they’re back on the air, delivering packages that is. During their delivery to the nude beach planet, they fall prey to weird-looking aliens who can sniff information, and they end up giving too much personal information and losing everything. Of course everybody on Earth falls for their scams and they must evacuate, and try to mount a final attack against many, many gold-plated Death Stars.
All this is complicated by the discovery of a time travel code that was tattooed to Fry’s ass. This paradox-correcting time travel is the movie’s main focus point, and it cleverly lets the series creators to refer to all those episodes during the first run of the series.
Almost all the series-popular characters are back: Al Gore, Harlem Globetrotters, Fry’s ex-girlfriend (voiced by Sarah Silverman), Santa robot, Hannukah zombie (voiced by Mark Hamill) and Kwanzaa-bot (voiced by Coolio). All the references to the old episodes won’t be detected by new-comers: however for series fans, this movie does a great job of continuing the story, and tying everything back to the original episodes.
This movie can easily be recommended by the series fans. Even newcomers will enjoy its humor, animation and stories. Think of it as The Simpsons in space, set in the future, with sharper writing and deeper characters and you aren’t pretty far off.
Rating: 80%
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