Saturday, December 29, 2007




FUTURAMA:
BENDER’S BIG SCORE
(Review)

Sweet Yeti of the Serengeti! They’re back, baby!
And I honestly hadn’t realized how much I’d missed Fry and Bender and Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth and the rest of the crew till a few minutes into the opening sequence of the direct-to-DVD movie, Bender’s Big Score.
It’s only here, apparently, when the crew finds out that they were cancelled two years ago! And it’s only now that Farnsworth actually remembers to inform them that they’re fired.
It seems that the “brainless drones” and “asinine morons” at the Box Network (or is that Fox Network?) saw fit to pull the plug on Planet Express. But fret not, for Farnsworth gets a call and is informed that they’ve all been renewed again, and all those drones and morons have been “ground up into a fine pink powder,” which has a million and one uses, and becomes a running joke through the length of the hilarious Big Score.
It was also only here, after Farnsworth gives us all the good news, when I realized I’d missed that signature theme too.
Oh, the little things…

Bender’s Big Score is a sweet ride that should be a blast for all you Futurama junkies out there. It’s got some familiar faces, the debut of the alluded-to-but-never-before-seen Chanukah zombie (voiced by Luke Skywalker himself, Mark Hamill), some neat and catchy tunes, a rather familiar-looking rabbit, and the reason why Al Gore lost the presidency in 2000.
It’s got time paradoxes and spam and inevitable doom and true love and New Scamadonia and remote-controlled solid-gold Death Stars and Kitten-class attack fighters.
Oh, and more Benders than you can shake a rusty wrench at. Plus, “the ancient and terrible secret of Fry’s buttocks”! What more could you want?!

I think we all know it’s a big universe out there. Massive. But it feels that much bigger without Zoidberg, doesn’t it?
So go on. Get ‘cher new Futurama fix, out on DVD. Now.

And if you’ve never seen Futurama before, well, all 72 episodes are out on DVD, meatbag, so go make those Fox… errr, I mean Box Network morons happy and flash those credit card digits. So says Hypnotoad.
And don’t worry. This ain’t no scam. (You can leave your email address at the door.)

Parting shot: There’re three more straight-to-DVD Futurama features scheduled for 2008, The Beast with a Billion Backs, Bender’s Game, and Into the Wild Green Yonder.
All four features will then reportedly be edited and slightly reconfigured to serve as a score of half-hour long episodes which will then air on Comedy Central; some reports say 13 episodes, some, 16.
(Okay. Whatever. Just so’s I got me my Bender…)

(Futurama: Bender’s Big Score DVD cover art courtesy of amazon.com; images courtesy of ilovebender.com.)

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