Futurama: Bender's Game

Bender's Big Score still remains the best of the series, displaying all of the emotion, intelligence, romance, and fun of the rest of the series into one feature film. However, whereas I was disappointed with Beast With a Billion Backs (which was the perfect demonstration of why Futurama is at its best not when it's funny, but when it tells a good story like it did in BBS), I was very impressed with Bender's Game. It missed out on the emotion of the first film by a mile, which is why it's not nearly on the same level, but it is still a marvelous love-letter to the fantasy genre and role playing games. Very funny and very entertaining, with Amy on Leela action that will have the fans salivating while they role their 12-sided die, Bender's Game is not quite the impressive feat that the first film was, but is a return to form after the disappointment of BWBB. Let's hope the final film tops them all.

The third and thus far worst of the Futurama feature films see's our heroes stuck in a world of dungeons and dragons and for that reason I expected great things. It most certainly did not deliver!

Being the big ol' nerd that I am I thought that could be the thing that takes the distinctly average Futurama and makes it enjoyable for me but instead it seems to have gone the other way.

The jokes are just not on point at all, they're worse than ever. I was shocked at a couple of them, I know that Futurama does adult jokes all the time but they're always done in such a way that a child wouldn't understand. A couple here were really obvious and blatant, a kid would get that!

As usual it's not bad, it's just not great either. The more of these movies I watch the less I'm looking forward to my Futurama binge. If a d&d setting can't make it enjoyable than what chance does it stand?

The Good:

A few decent jokes

Great LOTR parodies

The Bad:

Most jokes miss the mark

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

I don't think I'll ever get the appeal of this seriously overrated tosh

Let me put it this way, this movie was to "Billion backs" as "Billion backs" was to "Big score." The first movie was great, the second was just OK, and this one is actually kind of bad.

I hate to speak ill of anything Futurama, but fans should keep their expectations in check. The writing here is different...it's not the same style...the jokes feel lazy. Even the personalities aren't written in full force, you keep feeling like everybody is half-asleep or something.

lastly, the plot (or rather, "plot") is the worst by far. What had the potential to be a great economical satire (and failing that, even a jab at D&D and Lord of the Rings), completely lacks any focus or high level of comedic insight. As Futurama fans, we've come to expect an interesting story even if the comedy fails, but this may be the first time the story itself was so poorly implemented.

So what do we have left? Well, it's still the characters and settings we know and love already. Admittedly, the off-handed comments by the characters are still quite funny, and a handful of their social commentaries do hit the mark, as do a small number of the "regular" jokes.

Anyway, If you're a Futurama fan, you really owe it to yourself to keep up with these movies. At best, perhaps this is just a change in style that will take multiple viewings to appreciate. Nevertheless, I just want to say this: "We're Futurama fans; we expected better."

Bender plays Dungeons & Dragons with the kids to prove that he has an imagination but it drives him into the nut house. Leela gets challenged and enters Planet Express in a demolition derby. The Professor puts an electric collar on her for damaging the ship. She has to convince Dr. Zoidberg that she is cured of her anger issues before he takes it off. Mom is driving up the price of dark matter but there is no actual shortage. Professor reveals he's the one who worked on dark matter for Mom. The crew needs to find a missing crystal which would neutralize all the dark matter. Then Bender's overactive imagination sends everybody into a D&D alternate reality.

Nibbler's story recap is great and I like the crew's battle with Mom for the most part. Although I still don't like the scheme to neutralize black matter. I also don't like changing reality midway through the movie. I would rather have the whole movie be in an alternate reality or not do that at all. There are other minor quibbles but the cast of characters is still great. It's fun no matter how weird things get.

Direct-to-DVD movie; Genre: Animated Comedy, Science Fiction; Content Rating: Not Rated (contains animated violence and gore and pervasive scatological humor); Perspective: Contemporary (star range: 1 – 4);

In the first DVD movie outing the folks at "Futurama" took on internet scammers and time travel. In the 2nd, dating and religion through an intergalactic monster movie. Now in the third feature-length film, "Bender's Game", they cobble together the energy crisis and Dungeons and Dragons. It's a melding that this time could have used a few more trips to the writing table to get it to solidify.

In this self-contained adventure, the Planet Express crew suffers from the escalating price of rocket fuel dark matter, provoking Professor Farnsworth (Billy West) to go up against the maniacal head of Mom Corp (Tress MacNeille) who single-handedly controls the supply. Meanwhile, Leela (Katy Sagal) is disciplined for her violent temper and Bender (John DiMaggio) is accused of not having an imagination by the players of Dungeons and Dragons and is driven to robot madness by the game.

The first act of "Game" is something of a dream come true. For the first time the crew headed by David X. Cohen, Matt Groening and director Dwayne Carey-Hill ("Bender's Big Score") take advantage of the feature-length running time to slow things down a bit. The first act is a refreshing turn of a character comedy for this normally lightning-fast sci-fi satire in which details set-up in the series are brought to a head, notably some repressed anger from Leela toward Zoidburg and her appropriately hilarious reaction to a shock collar, a somewhat clever flashback to Nibbler's first meeting with the crew and the long promised next epic confrontation with Mom. As possibly the show's best villain, it's welcome to see this Mom story finally realized and MacNeille is something of a powerhouse in the voice performance. This is her time to shine. This section of the movie is in flashes some of the best work the show has done.

While D&D is established early and often, it still doesn't help cushion the wild, hard left turn the movie takes from its energy/Mom story to randomly and literally (and I do mean literally) dropping the characters into a D&D fantasy world. In this section the moderately funny, full of potential story is completely abandoned and the movie curls up and dies. Cohen, Carey-Hill and company totally indulge in their nerdiest impulses and to hell with the story. More disappointingly, they choose to parody some of the most obvious and mainstream fantasy sources – mostly "Lord of the Rings". The characters are put into a mix-&-match parody blender. All of a sudden Leela is a centaur, Fry is Frydo who acts like Gollum, the Professor is Gandolf who takes a "Star Wars" turn and Zoidburg is a giant cave monster. "Futurama's" strength has always been that it isn't mainstream. "Game" is a broad, easily accessible palette cleanser of toilet humor and forced gags after the sharp, iconoclastic and surreal "Beast With A Billion Backs" - which for my money is still the triumph of the movie series so far.

The D&D section of the film didn't have to be a mindless lost cause. But the "Futurama" crew doesn't in any way make an attempt to resolve the first and 2nd acts of the movie with it. As randomly as our heroes entered the world, they leave it just in time for a quick wrap-up. The Game portion of "Game" is head-slappingly obvious filler that will probably send most viewers to the show's famously great commentary tracks for an explanation (Cohen and Groening give nothing). Instead of the creative or scientific explanation we've come to expect from Futurama, "Bender's Game" leaves us with the classically disappointing "It was All a Dream" ending. It's a punch in the face.

The movie is randomly entertaining and I do love the extended mix of the show's theme that plays over the credits, but this is a hard one to recommend even to hardcore fans of the show.

* * ½ / 4