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Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs
Futurama The Beast with a Billion Backs
Actors: Brittany Murphy, Dan Castellaneta, David Cross, Phil LaMarr, Billy West
Director: Peter Avanzino
Genres: Action & Adventure, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Television, Animation
UR     2008     1hr 29min

The thrilling conclusion to Futurama: Benders Big Score. Bender and the planet express crew must contend with a massive cosmic team that sends the world into panic.

     

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Movie Details

Actors: Brittany Murphy, Dan Castellaneta, David Cross, Phil LaMarr, Billy West
Director: Peter Avanzino
Genres: Action & Adventure, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Television, Animation
Sub-Genres: Action & Adventure, Animation, Science Fiction, Made-for-TV Movies, Animation
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Format: DVD - Color,Widescreen - Animated,Subtitled
DVD Release Date: 06/24/2008
Original Release Date: 01/01/2008
Theatrical Release Date: 01/01/2008
Release Year: 2008
Run Time: 1hr 29min
Screens: Color,Widescreen
Number of Discs: 1
SwapaDVD Credits: 1
Total Copies: 0
Members Wishing: 0
MPAA Rating: Unrated
Languages: English
Subtitles: English, French, Spanish

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Movie Reviews

The Proud Result of Prison Writing
doomsdayer520 | Pennsylvania | 06/30/2008
(3 out of 5 stars)

"While I'm a truly devoted Futurama fan, I'm not one of those condescending supergeeks who claim to love Futurama so much that I have the authority to tell everyone else how virulently they're supposed to hate anything even slightly different than my favorite old episodes. (That's right, you heard me.) I'm ecstatic that Futurama has returned from the dead, and I totally loved "Bender's Big Score." But this new Futurama flick disappoints. Most of what we know and love about Futurama is still here in spades, but this flick suffers from a poorly-developed plot and a degeneration of the show's formerly deep and subversive humor.

The 88-minute format is either too long for a compact and focused plotline, or too short for the type of complex story the producers appear to be striving for. The story here jumps around at a very awkward pace and shows signs of severe over-editing. The jokes have been reduced to Family Guy-like asides played for cheap guffaws rather than deep thoughts. (The caped superhero is an unfortunate example, and Bender's firstborn son is a very unfortunate example.)

Many holes and inconsistencies in the storyline show that plot construction took a backseat to the more easily written sight gags and cheap asides. (Here's an example that hopefully won't be condemned as a spoiler. Late in the film the new Yivo character says he [sklee] sent an image of himself to artists in our universe, but most of the story is built on the idea that Yivo thought he was alone in all universes.) The fundamental story has also trumped the longstanding strengths of the show. The personalities of Fry and Leela (and important supporting characters like Kif) are inconsistent, Bender has been demoted to an unworkable subplot, and Zoidberg does little more than vomit for simpleminded laughs. There are also many missed opportunities for building upon the cliffhangers left from "Bender's Big Score."

You can rest assured that the great Futurama animation, music, and voice acting (the actors have always been the show's unsung heroes) won't disappoint this time around. But the writing will. Certain fans may or may not like the basic story, but the bigger point is that everyone will notice the careless and unprofessional defects in the story. Hopefully this flick will just be a temporary misstep. Console yourself by remembering once again how lucky we are to have Futurama back among the living. [~doomsdayer520~]"
Too late to go back to the future?
Dan Plankton | Somerville, MA | 06/25/2008
(3 out of 5 stars)

"I bought this on the day of release, so of course I'm a big Futurama fan and expected to like it. I thought Bender's Big Score was a decent effort showing some rust, so to speak, and that the new releases would get better from there. This one is a letdown, though. No doubt, there are some good jokes, and I laughed here and there during the 90 minutes. But the writing really doesn't feel like Futurama. The grossout and mildly sick humor is amped up (it was always there but balanced with the show's sophisticated writing), and in particular, some of the humor that plays on the film's "rape" plot has a slightly ugly edge. There's also a lengthy subplot with Calculon that really drags down the film while offering almost no laughs.

The special features are pretty weak too. The deleted scenes reel is very short, the "blooper" section is just 2 minutes of the voice actors mugging for the video cameras (though this guy is happy to look at Tress McNeill and Katey Segal), and the full-length "episode" created for a video game just doesn't have the laughs.

Bottom line: I eagerly awaited this and bought it day of release; I won't be in such a hurry for the next one (which doesn't look so hot, based on the preview included with this one)."
They Family Guy'd Futurama!
Eli Gottlieb | 06/24/2008
(2 out of 5 stars)

"And by that I mean that while all the one-off jokes work (hell, many of them are downright hilarious!), they have little of the plot- and character-relevance that made Futurama such a great series. And for the record, I really liked "Bender's Big Score". It was FUN ON A BUN.

In fact, this film's plot itself ventures into a genre that I'd much rather have seen Futurama stay at two removes from: romantic comedy. Except this time it's all the inhabitants of our universe ("Universe Gamma") in a romantic comedy with a planet-sized tentacled monster from another universe. There's a Bender sideplot that serves absolutely no purpose except to give Bender screen time and ultimately give him a reason to basically undo everything that happened in the movie, just when one would expect a perfectly Futurama-style twistedly happy ending.

Speaking of undoing things that happened, I really must complain that this film literally resets the past eight years of Futurama continuity. Since the Niblonians and Brainspawn are no longer in Universe Gamma and every single romantic relationship has been reset to a basic state of "not existing", it really appears as though the writers behaved exactly like a dog encountering a chess board: knocking every piece out of its place with no real character development just so they could put them into the absurd places their canine brains desired.

Finally, it has come to my attention that a lot of people got a lot more out of this film by reading it as a portrayal of the events described by the Book of the Revelation of John (aka: the Book of Revelations, aka: that crazy Apocalypse thing). Despite my knowledge of the story, being a Jew I guess I just can't see the parallels. You can only see them after someone else tells you about them, which means they aren't really there."
Disappointed. Sad and disappointed.
Daniel Erlewine | Cupertino CA | 06/26/2008
(2 out of 5 stars)

"First of all, I am a huge futurama fan. Pretty much a ridiculous fan, I own all four seasons, plus the comics, plus the DVD collections that are just compilations from the seasons. And I love them all. The first Futurama 'movie' "Bender's Big Score" was great. I really enjoyed it. This one however... It just wasn't coherent.

The plot was seriously lacking, and the storyline wasn't strung together very well at all. In certain points I found myself thinking "You mean there's still more? Shouldn't it be over?!". Also, it seems like they've taken writing cues from the more recent seasons of "The Simpsons", many of the jokes were a bit over the top and at the same time low-brow. One of the things I love about Futurama is the creative and clever writing, the jokes that are a bit more clever, and not all physical comedy.

This movie was rife with moments where you just say "Yuck. That's not funny, it's just kind of gross". Which I think would be a great way to sum up the movie in general. It's not funny, it's just kind of gross."