Futurama: Bender's Game (2008)

3 STARS


Directed by Dwayne Carey-Hill
Produced by Claudia Katz, Lee Supercinski
Written by Eric Horsted, Michael Rowe, Eric Kaplan, David X. Cohen, Patric M. Verrone

Starring Billy West, Katey Sagal, John DiMaggio

Runtime 1 hour, 27 min.
Worldwide Gross N/A
Genres Comedy, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Adventure

Debuting on television in 1999, Matt Groening's futuristic space comedy "Futurama" was on for four seasons before being cut off the air. Despite good reviews and three Emmy Awards, the program was put to shame by FOX's lack of support and constant changing of the show's timeslot. Once being rebroadcast by late night programming, "Futurama" found itself a strong audience and steady support for the show's revival. Five years later, what fans get is a series of four straight-to-video films. The films were so successful, a new season of television shows are now being produced for airtime on Comedy Central. Bender's Game is the third in the video series.

What "Futurama" was known for was its intelligent humor, as well as its zaniness and originality. Though the humor is still present in Bender's Game, what lacks is the series' sophistication and charm. From five years ago, "Futurama" has seemed to decreased in its quality, taking cheap jokes and easy laughs. The series was much more detailed than these videos are. Everything just seems dulled down for the 20-year-old bachelor crowd. Where's the intelligence and subtle comedy that used to be the soul of this program? I hope they haven't gotten lost in the five years of the show's hiatus.

What is still hear as loud as it was originally is the writers' use of imagination. The plot is fun, fresh and original. In this adventure, the Planet Express crew becomes concerned with business conglomerate MomCorp monopolizing the fuel industry. With gas prices and tensions rising, the gang goes to the MomCorp HQ to try and stop the madness, with damaging and equally interesting results. The voice acting is still marvelous, with each line dripping with the talent of a powerful cast. The animation is crisp as well. It's finely polished and well done. You can tell they put a lot of effort in keeping with the visuals of the television series.

Sadly, I fear that this sharp comedy might be going down the wrong path. Some parts of the story seem rushed. Some plot twists are so quick it makes the film a bit confusing. I never had this problem with the series. Things were showcased beautifully. This is even more impressive since the crew had to force an interesting story into only 22 minutes. But with Bender's Game, they had a whole 90 minutes to use to their advantage. Why did they make the decision to move things at a quicker pace? Take your time. You actually have some of it to spare now.

What Bender's Game succeeds with is its superiority over the two previous films. Though this story's pacing problems might take away from the film from time to time, they're much improved from Bender's Big Score, the first in the Futurama film quadrilogy. This film also is more focused than the second, The Beast with a Billion Backs. So, with what I can tell, the series is definitely getting better. It's just not quite up to the par it used to be. Hopefully these films are simply experimentation until the film's new season and not a change of heart.

Though it might sound like I'm ripping into the film a bit, Bender's Game is definitely worth watching. It's very funny. In fact, I'm actually impressed that the quality of the film isn't worse than it is. With pressure from the currently popular toilet and barf humor in today's comedy, I'm glad that "Futurama" hasn't totally lost its ethics. Though there's some toilet humor in Bender's Game that you wouldn't have seen before, there aren't any "Family Guy"-esque moments that want to make me throw up. That's definitely something to celebrate. Here's to hoping it doesn't get worse!

Bender's Game is currently unrated.