Bender's Big...Bore?

Being a humongous Futurama fan, I was pretty psyched when I heard they were making 4 direct-to-DVD movies of the show. I watched the first of these movies, Bender's Big Score, on New Year's Eve with friends who are even huger fans (they named their son after the lead character: Filip Jay). It was good, but not great. The good news, if you're a fan of the show, is that the movie was definitely made for fans. There are multiple, multiple references to old episodes, so there was a lot of "Oh, so that's what happened." For me, these constitute the funniest parts of the movie. The bad news is that overall, it just wasn't as funny as your average Futurama episode, and since it lasts almost an hour and a half, the lack of laughs is even more evident.

I think there were two main problems. One is that the plot, such as it is, is based on time travel. And there's a LOT of time travel. I'm sure the confusion that ensues is supposed to be part of the humor, but after a while it stopped being amusing and just got a bit annoying. Another problem for me is that one major side story focuses on Hermes, by far my least favorite character. I can only assume (and hope) that one of the next movies will have a Zoidberg side story.

So bottom line, it's worth checking out if you're a fan and have seen all or most of the regular episodes. Also, apparently Comedy Central is chopping the movie up into 4 episodes and airing them like that, so maybe it would be a little easier to swallow that way. As for the next three movies, all have different writers, so I'm hoping these improve as they go along.

One last thing. The DVD includes a full episode of "Everybody Loves Hypnotoad." And it's true. After watching it, I love Hypnotoad very, very much.

Addendum: After reading this post, my wife wanted me to mention that she guessed the major plot twist approximately 1/3 of the way through the movie. And again, I use the word "plot" very loosely.