They're back! After 4 sad and miserable years of Futurama-less existence our prayers have been heard and Fry, Leela and Bender returns in a full length feature film, Bender's Big Score!
After the initial jabs at Fox for cancelling them the story kicks off when the Planet Express team is sent to deliver a package to the Nude Beach Planet. There they run into some nudist alien scammers who send them all spam mails and trick them into giving away all their credit card info. They also infect Bender with a virus that makes him do whatever they say. After a short while they've taken over Professor Farnsworth's entire company and then they use the secret of time travel, which they found tattooed on Fry's ass (long story...), to send Bender back in time to steal all valuable objects ever made so they can live as kings and rule the world.
To stop them, Fry too has to travel back in time and from there it becomes an epic tale of love, war, narwhales, sprunjes and lots of hilarious adventures starring pretty much every single character that's been on Futurama and more!
It's great to finally have some new Futurama fun and this first of four DVD movies doesn't hold back and it certainly doesn't disappoint, though, to be honest, it does have a few problems here and there. It doesn't quite achieve the highs that some of the series' episodes did, but it still manages to be really really good and it contains everything that made Futurama as popular as it was. The writers and producers have neither dumbed it down nor made it bland to attempt to reach a bigger audience. These movie's are for the fans and, even if it means we won't get more, it's going to be a great ride judging by the high quality of this first one.
Bender's Big Score takes full advantage of the possibilities that the extra time gives them. The story spans both time and space and is just as big, fun and filled with adventure as it should be. It might be a little complicated to follow, though, as the number of time travels quickly increase and different timelines and character versions start to cross and run into each other. Time paradoxes and multiple timelines are not easy things to keep track of, but if you feel that you start to vane just sit back, relax, and laugh at the multitude of jokes that are thrown at you along the way. Most of it makes sense at the end and even if you miss something, which is pretty much guaranteed since there's always some jokes hidden away in Futurama, you can just watch it again later and have fun a second time.
As for the mentioned problems, I feel the biggest one is that the story flows a little weird. The reason is that the movie is later going to be cut into four episodes for TV and it's pretty obvious where those cuts are going to be made. This causes the movie to sort of have four acts instead of the usual three and, though it never becomes a big problem, it does throw it off a little bit. I also felt the new nudist scammer villains to be a little weird, apart from the obvious and designed reasons of course. They come a little out of nowhere and seem just a little too bland when compared to most of the other great characters that Futurama has delivered. The scammers functions more as pure plot devices than anything else and even though this is the second time I watch this movie I still can't make any character distinctions between the three of them. Also, not enough Zapp Brannigan!
The rest of the movie, though, is top notch. The music is good and the animation looks great as always. From the new extended intro to the big fight at the end with a lots of spaceships versus hundreds of solid-gold Death Stars it's just a fantastically fun romp through the Futurama universe. There's also an interesting story twist at the very end, but unless you're half asleep you'll see it coming from a mile away.
The voice-acting is awesome as usual. Billy West (Fry, Professor Farnsworth, Zapp Brannigan etc.) and John Di Maggio (Bender, Sal, Barbados Slim, Robot Santa etc.) make up pretty much half of the characters between them, but they do such good jobs with the distinctions that you'd never notice it. Katey Sagal once again does a great job as Leela and then there's the usual suspects who portray most of the secondary Futurama characters. Maurice LaMarche as Kif, Morbo and Narrator, Phil Lamarr as Hermes, Lauren Tom as Amy and David Herman as Scruffy, and they all do additional voices as well. Frank Welker is great as the bombastic voice of Nibbler and then there's all the celebrity cameos. Mark Hamill shows up as Chanukah Zombie, Coolio is Kwanza-Bot and last, but not least, Al Gore is back as Al Gore, environmentalist and First Emperor of the Moon!
All round this first Futurama movie delivers a great story, lots of jokes, very good characters and a whole bunch of time travelling craziness. Not as good as the best episodes, but not far behind either so this is a must for everyone that has been following the show and any new fans who've discovered it's greatness on DVD in the last few years. It's just awesome to finally have Futurama back and Bender's Big Score is a great new addition to this animated space saga.
8 / 10
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