This week Futurama returned from the cancellation hell that those idiots at Fox threw it into. The show has gained a huge following on Adult Swim since the cancellation, and is returning as a series of direct to DVD movies, and more episodes on Comedy Central in 2008.

“Bender’s Big Score” is their first feature length DVD…so…how does it stand up?

The Movie

I’m not even going to begin to recap the plot of the movie for you. I’ll hit a few highlights, but if you want to know the whole story, you’re going to have to buy the DVD.

The movie opens with a nice, stiff jab at Fox, then moves right into the plot. The gang all end up getting Spam after they give out their email addresses at a nude beach (you know, like you do). Also at the beach, they discover that Fry has a tattoo of Bender on his ass. The tattoo and the spammers lead to a time traveling adventure that covers thousands of years, and plays fan service to the audience like no money has ever done before.

All the major stuff is hit upon, including appearances by almost every character you can think of. Leela and Fry’s relationship (or lack there of) is a central focus of the film, and they even manage to work in a space opera styled battle with Solid Gold Death Stars at the climax of the film.

I’m not a hardcore Futurama fan. I’ve seen several episodes, and I’ll flip over to it when there’s nothing else on late at night, but I don’t have the show memorized, and I haven’t seen every episode. Even at my level of interest, I caught most of the in-show references, and even if I missed some - they weren’t distracting.

This is a really good space opera comedy, even by itself. It takes just about every cliche in the history of Sci-Fi, and somehow makes it all seem fresh and funny. The plot is a bit complicated at times (although it wraps up nicely at the end), and there is a secret about one of the characters that I figured out about half an hour before they revealed it - which was a slight negative. I wish it had taken longer to figure it out, so that the 15 minutes they spend explaining it wouldn’t have seemed so dragged out.

The only real negative I can say about it, is that it is clear where the movie will be broken up into episodes. They tried to hide it, but it’s very clear where those breaks will be, and that makes it feel like 3 episodes of a series at times. That can sometimes make it feel a bit dragged out - but, I was laughing the whole time, so I can’t complain too much.

8 out of 10

The Video

I watched this on my HD-DVD player which upscales the video to 1080i, and I have to say, the movie looks beautiful. The animation is not quite on par with the Simpson’s movie - but it looks very close. If there has been any reduction in budget on the show, it doesn’t show on screen. This thing looked great.

9 out of 10

The Extras

The DVD is filled with extras including the standard stuff like a commentary, deleted scenes (in storyboard format), the script, character designs and things like that. Where this goes the extra mile with features like a live reading of the Futurama comic books by the cast, an Al Gore specific special feature which a promo for an Inconvenient Truth feature Al and Bender, a Futurama math lecture, and even an episode of “Everybody Loves Hypnotoad”.

I’m a sucker for documentaries on DVDs - and I really wish this had one - but there is certainly a ton of stuff here to keep you entertained.

If you buy the DVD at Best Buy, you get an extra bonus disk as well that features some Animatics, and a preview of the next Futurama DVD - “The Beast with a Thousand Backs” - and it’s worth getting the bonus disk just for that preview. It’s in black and white and it’s mostly just animation roughs with the audio added - but it clearly shows that the next Futurama DVD is going to rock just as hard as this one did.

8 out of 10

The Packaging

The one thing I really don’t like about this is the packaging. I really hate the thinness of it, and the special effect cover. I imagine the packing (except of the special effect piece of plastic) is designed to be “greener”, which is fine…I just don’t love it.

Although the disk being a solid gold Death Star is pretty awesome.

7 out of 10

Final Thoughts

If you’re a fan of Futurama run - don’t walk - to you local store and buy this DVD. If you’ve never seen Futurama before, this probably isn’t the best place to start, go buy at least the first season on DVD first.

I really loved this DVD. Far more than most episodes of the show. It has everything that makes Futurama great in it, and I have very little negative to say. This is simply a MUST HAVE for any Futurama fan.

Final Score: 9 out of 10