Futurama is an interesting show in that it is different yet samey at the same time. The visuals look slick and colourful, it mixes drama with comedy (you only have to see Jurrassic Bark to see what i mean) however at the same time, it can still fall flat. A fair few of the characters are one dimensional. A few comming in for one liners (zoidberg) or main characters built on chatchphrases (Bender). I still remain that in it's day, at it's best, The Simpsons was the best TV show of all time, animated or other. However The Simpsons qaility has dropped to terrible levels, and i still find it hard to believe that when Simpsons was churning out near-crap, futurama, which was still performing on a more than solid level, was cancelled. When The simpsons movie came out, i must admit it was better than i expected. Some jokes were very funny, however most fell flat and i guess deep down it was more the spectacle of seeing them on the big screen that pushed the movie beyond the praise it deserved. The simpsons movie was made when simpsons was at a low point, Futurama movie was made when it was at a high point, and this movie proved it should of never left our screens.
Where Simpsons was lacking on belly laugh jokes, Futurama : Bender's Big Score did not. It brought joke after joke, many pushing the bounderies ("can i use your pen" "your tail was wagging") and giving it a wellcomed egde. The Narrative is both interesting and well played out, it moves smoothly while still allowing for off-beat comedy moments and direct away from what is a pretty dense and complicated narrative.
When i heard there were songs, i was so worried. However, if you too are worried, don't be. There's only Two and they are both brilliantly excuted and Very funny. Here we get wellcomed returns for characters such as bubblegum tate, barbados Slim and Zap. This film also opened my eyes to what a great character Fry is. I mentioned earlier that i feel Bender can sometimes fall too flat in terms of layers to his character, however Fry is, IMO, one of the richest characters on TV. Here the emotional thread of the film revolves around him, and his character really comes into his own. Through the series there was always that interesting angle that fry was dumb, yet passionate and though maybe not as book smart, had it over his future friends as he knew and missed a lot of the things in 2000. He is dumb but being redeemable by emotion and a sense of relatablitity.
What sold it for me totally was that i never felt Bender's Big score trited too hard. Where the simpsons movie would times take breaks to show one-stand alone- one liner or set piece (chores, lights out at moes ect.) however the jokes in Bender's big score i felt came more naturally and happened and co-existed within the narrative.
All in all, Bender's Big score is fantastic, belly laughs throughout, but more importantly mixed with a real emotional narrative thread. It keeps up where it left off, shame the simpsons did too, ay?
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