If The Simpsons is the Flintstones of the Matt Groening universe, theJetsons. Unfortunately, I feel about Futurama the way I felt about both Hanna-Barbera shows, that they weren’t funny, simply conventional sitcoms tricked up with gimmicks.

Just this evening, I sat before the television tube and laughed out loud at the newest episode of The Simpsons. But earlier this week I watched the whole of the Futurama: Bender’s Big Score (Fox Home Entertainment, 88 minutes, $29.99, full frame, DD 5.1, commentary, deleteds, making-ofs, galleries, street date Tuesday 27 November, 2007) without cracking even a smile. This straight-to-video TV movie wasn’t boring. Nor was The Simpsons Movie, which was geared down to attract broader audiences. I just didn’t get into the characters or situations, and the jokes seemed crude. I’ve never seen the show itself, and this one-off may not be representative.

Apparently it was a big tragedy when the show was canceled by Fox, and the very beginning of the film takes a few cracks at Fox because of it. In fact, this is the first of four movies that will be broken up into 20-minute episodes that will be shown as a phantom “fifth season” on Comedy Central.

The plot of Bender’s Big Score concerns some aliens who invade the show’s central delivery service location as spam mailers, enslaving Bender, the go-to robot. In the course of the show, he travels into the past and raids the world of its art objects and collectibles, hence the title. Another sub-plot concerns main character Billy Fry and his jealousy over the one-eyed Turanga Leela falling for a young doctor. Both narratives have unexpected conclusions.

As with The Simpsons, the plot takes crazy twists and turns, pauses for digressions, kills people with impunity (only to bring them back mostly unharmed), and riots in in-jokes. In fact, it is clear why the show has a cult following, as it caters to the prejudices and interests of science buffs, the sort of people who live their lives like the guys on The Big Bang Theory. One of the supplements of the disc makes this clear. The producers invite a mathematician who has written a book about
Futurama to give “lessons” in math and in the secret languages that viewers are invited to decode.

In fact, Futurama: Bender’s Big Score is notable for having better extras than a main feature. Supplements include a hard-to-follow, overpopulated commentary track with Groening, head writer David X. Cohen, director Dwayne Carey-Hill, producer Claudia Katz, writer Ken Keeler and “voices” Billy West, John DiMaggio, and Phil LaMarr. There are three deleted scenes (about three minutes’ worth), a whole early draft of the script (”Bender’s Big Score: The Original First Draft Of The Script”), plus a joke feature that purports to provide a full episode of that favorite show of the future, Everyone Loves Hypnotoad. In addition to the aforementioned math lecture (”Bite My Shiny Metal X: A Mind-Shattering Futurama Math Lecture”), there are also a couple of San Diego ComiCon recordings of the cast orally interpreting a comic book story about the show’s rebirth (”Futurama Returns! A Live Comic Book Reading By The Futurama Cast”), and a five minute ComiCon promo for the series. There is also a fake trailer called “A Terrifying Message From Al Gore” who is also in the movie itself (this comes with an optional commentary by Al Gore, Matt Groening, and David X. Cohen). Finally, there are several galleries, including “New Character Design Sketches.”

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 16th, 2007 at 11:56 pm and is filed under Reel Politique - Film columnist DK Holm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.