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Futurama as a TV series has been canceled for awhile, but thanks to Fox Home Entertainment, you can get your (pretty) regular dose of the crew with direct-to-DVD movies. First one Bender’s Big Score ended with a tear in the space, and the new movie The Beast With a Billion Backs picks up right afterwards. After discovering this tear could lead to another universe, Dr. Farnsworth mounts an expedition with his incredibly expandable crew. Fry, after discovering that his girlfriend has 4 other live-in boyfriends, dumps her and is full of sorrow. Unable to take it, Fry sets out to the other universe.

On the other side of the tear is a being with tentacles called Yivo. Yivo makes Fry his emissary as the tentacles invade our universe. Soon everyone in the universe has a tentacle to their neck as a way of, umm, being together with Yivo.

The movie is, as you’d expect, full of pop references and in-jokes. Even the opening sequence has a tribute to Steamboat Willie with Futurama characters of course. Futurama’s humor is not as random as on Family Guy, another canceled but revived animation. The theme of this movie – love, sex and relationship – is refreshingly adult even for the series and it shows how well the series is maturing. This movie is strongly recommended to Futurama fans, although newcomers to the series should first finish the TV series before embarking on the movies.

Rating: 70%

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%