Futurama: Bender's Big Score

It was extremely sad and perhaps even more so, upsetting, that Futurama was cancelled. It had been on for a few seasons and was some of the best television on at the time. While I was surprised that it was cancelled, I am partially to blame, as I never watched it every week. Perhaps that was the fault of its scheduling, as it would be on randomly and at slightly different times as it was pushed back if football ran late.

But now it's coming back, and has started with this new movie that came out last year (that sounds weird, as it was just 2007). Straight to "video" is fine for something like this as Futurama has always belonged on the small screen, just like the Simpsons. But what took the Simpsons fifteen plus years to accomplish took Futurama only a couple, and Futurama did it right. This movie didn't feel like an extended episode, but still had the feel of a regular episode.

The plot is typical for Futurama and doesn't get too complicated. Of course, with time travel that may be difficult to do but they manage to pull it off well here. What's really great about this movie is how it integrates and explains into the regular season episodes. What you get is some behind the scenes of your favourite episodes, and some loose ends tied up. Now, I've been told the movie makes much more sense and really wraps things up from the regular series, but truth be told, I have yet to watch every episode, especially the later ones.

The humour is good, the characters are all there and the classic Futurama sentimental moments are there too. The show could be quite touching and I'm glad to see that translated into this movie, without going overboard and still keeping the quality humour.

So in the end, I would rate the movie 8.5 out of 10. Yes, I must start supplying numerical ratings to the movies; after a while I should post a simple listing of everything for easy lookup and for...documentation.

And an update for the "one hi-def a week" campaign: I purchased Blade Runner for Blu-Ray. Really solid film and an awesome five disc set. Unfortunately the five disc is just a reprint of the first disc; if you Google it, the issue is fairly rampant. I was hoping I would get lucky, but I have since returned the movie and exchanged it, only to experience the same problem. Not a great start but Future Shop was very good with the exchange; I just hope they are willing to do a few times if this issue keeps coming up.