DVD Special Features:

• Commentary by Matt Groening, David X. Cohen, Billy West, John DiMaggio, Dwayne Carey-Hill, Claudia Katz & Ken Keeler
• Futurama Returns! Live cast reading of the comic book satirizing the events between cancellation and resurrection
• Everybody Loves Hypnotoad Twenty-two minutes of hypnotic goodness
• Deleted Storyboard Scenes
• A Terrifying Message from Al Gore Animated promo for An Inconvenient Truth featuring optional commentary by Al Gore, Matt Groening & David X. Cohen
• Bite My Shiny Metal X A Futurama math lecture
• 3D Models/3D Turnarounds
• Bender's Big Score Original draft of the script
• New Character/Design Sketches
• Original 5-Minute ComiCon Promo

I was pleased by the amount and quality of the special features on the disc. I've always enjoyed the commentary by the Futurama cast and creators. They seem to have a good rapport and know how to entertain and inform without being dry. The comic book reading was predictable hilarious, especially the skewering of the network and the list of fan travails. I actually watched the entire episode of Everybody Loves Hypnotoad. Basically, it's Hypnotoad on a white background mitigated only by a few scene changes and "commercials." It was mildly amusing for a bit, but more fast-forward worthy than anything. The promo for Al Gore's movie is worth watching, simply because Bender is a guest star and it does showcase Mr. Gore's rarely glimpsed (outside of Futurama) sense of humor. The math lecture was pretty interesting; not too long and not too dry. Topics covered include: pi, language codes, topology, measurement of time, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, programming language, infinity and the jokes garnered from them. The 3D turnarounds and new character/design sketches are exactly as advertised, be sure to check them out if you'd like a more in-depth look at the ships, characters and locations that seem to scoot by in the film.

Due to the length of the feature, I'll divide the review into the four parts they'll likely be divided into as episodes. Bear in mind that there is quite a lot of rapid-fire scene changing from past to future. Not an easy task to describe, so don't hold it against me.

On to the show:

The movie opens with a fabulously animated sequence in which we follow an owl's eye view as it comes home to roost at Planet Express. Hermes begins roll call, which reassures the viewer quite effectively that our favorite characters, and their voice actors, are back. The Professor tells them they're all fired due to a two year old acquisition and subsequent "contract cancellation" by a competing delivery firm, "The Box Network." The cut-scene of the drooling "Box" execs segues into a phone call from the new Box Network executives re-instating their jobs. Before the celebration begins, the Professor takes a considerable amount of glee describing the fates of the previous morons. (I personally laughed the hardest at this segment, because I totally agree with the thinly-veiled sentiments expressed concerning Fox's decision.) Now it's party time! There's a sequence of jubilant animation, mostly just having fun with the possibilites. Unfortunately, Hermes loses his head. Literally. After an impromptu limbo competition using a sabre from the mantel, Hermes' gloating is cut short by a falling sabre and his body is crushed by the Planet Express ship. After an expanded opening credits sequence, an ambulance takes Hermes and the gang to the head museum triage.

The doctor calls in a jar jockey named Lars to jar up Hermes' head while he's waiting for his body to be repaired. Lars takes an immediate liking to Leela and the pair seem to hit it off. Meanwhile, LaBarbara and Dwight rush in only to leave Hermes behind for a new husband/father figure until his body is ambulatory once again. The Professor enters as they exit, delivering his usual good news: They have a delivery to the Nude Beach Planet! Consoling Hermes takes a backseat to frolicking nekkid in the sun. After a bit of a rocky arrival, the crew wastes no time in stripping off and catching some rays. Fry heads off to the bar to make their delivery (Bar stool softener, gotta love it!) revealing a tattoo of Bender on his ass that even Fry didn't know he had. The story quickly moves on to more soaking up the sun. Everyone in the crew is approached to sign a petition by 3 pink, wrinkly beings, using a different hook for every person they encounter to scam them out of their e-mail addresses. It doesn't take long before the e-mail scamming begins. Amy decides anti-depressants are the answer, while Bender downloads a virus leaving him under the control of the scammer aliens, only known to him a this point. Hermes admonishes them for giving out personal information, followed by a security lecture from the Professor. Ultimately, he too falls for the alien scam.

The three aliens, Nudar, Schlomo and Fleb, arrive to take over the company, and its revealed to all that Bender is their slave. They force the staff to deliver their "anti-depressants" and other bogus goods to scammed customers. Lars arrives to deliver bad news; the head museum was scammed too and it could be months or years until Hermes' body is repaired. Leela seizes the opportunity to walk Lars to the door and makes a date with him. Fry still believes that in spite of his immaturity, he and Leela are destined to be together. The news of her impending date with Lars breaks his heart. The scammer aliens use their sprunjers (sensory organs in their necks that expand rather suggestively in the presence of information) to investigate the premises and find the Professors' safe and empty it of all the information therein. When Fry walks in they become frenzied until they find the tattoo of Bender. They have the Professor examine the tattoo in depth, and discover a binary code in Bender's pupil - the universal machine language time code that allows time travel. No one knows how the time code came to be on Fry's ass, but the aliens have plans to plunder through the time line. Nibbler once against reveals his intellect and warns them that use of the code could tear the universe apart. Greed is the only motivation for the scammer aliens, and Nibbler calls in the Nibblonian attack fleet to put a stop to them. They fail - the universe is doomed! The Professor warns them against time paradox, but Nibbler tells them that the code is self-correcting, the only downfall is the possible destruction of the universe. (Is that all?) One of the aliens tests the code and goes back to the previous evening and his double (and new life partner) arrives at the door. The Professor swears there's a paradox there as, almost simultaneously, the "new" alien meets his end when the smell-o-scope falls on him.

Once again, I must say I enjoyed the Professor's sequence about the fate of the Box Network executives Immensely. The new opening and subsequent celebratory scene both showcase the usual fine animation on Futurama. I thought that the opening was paced well and a generally seamless transition from the series. I was a little disappointed that Fry and Leela's walk off into the sunset from "The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings" wasn't referenced, but that was what they tended towards in the series as well. I also loved the character design of the scammer aliens. They remind me of hairless rats, and the sprunjer and most references to it are just hilarious.

End Act 1

The aliens research the time code and learn that the time portal is one way; they can steal anything in any time, but won't be able to bring it or themselves back. Bender volunteers to use the portal and then wait in the limestone cavern under the Planet Express building until the present day. A quick aside shows the Professor selling off his doomsday devices to make ends meet, save the sphere-o-boom, which he keeps in a case handcuffed to his wrist. The action quickly moves forward to 2308 where we find Bender stealing the Nobel Prize (for ending the feud between East and West coast rappers, ha!). He makes his getaway in a flying saucer, followed by the authorities. He clones his ship and the scene cuts to Fry still frozen in his cryogenic chamber, and we see the familiar destruction of society scene from the pilot. (Another loose end tied up.) Back in the future, Leela is prepping for her date with Lars while singing his praises, as Fry simmers. In another part of the building, Nudar and his cronies plot with Bender to relieve the Professor of his favorite doomsday device. After retrieving said device by sawing off the Professor's hand as he sleeps, Bender squirrels it away in the safe. Hermes later watches while Zoidberg sews the Professors' hand back on and is inspired by his handiwork (yuk yuk). He asks Bender to go back in time and get him a duplicate of his old body. Lickity-split, Hermes has a body once again. Unfortunately, Zoidberg puts his head on backwards, which doesn't hinder his ability to make chase after Zoidberg.

The Professor calls in Bubblegum Tate and the Globetrotters to help solve the time paradox equation. Bubblegum points out the "doom field" that corrects the time paradoxes, which rises exponentially with repeated use leading to the doooom to which Nibbler earlier referred. Hermes' chase of Dr. Z interrupts their session, but the Professor's notice of Hermes' new duplicate body lead them to posit that time duplicates are always doomed. Hermes has a limited amount of time before his body meets an unfortunate end once again. Cut to Leela and Lars' date night at Elzar's. They hit it off and spend quality time playing miniature golf, parking at the Cylon War Memorial & Make out Point and taking a hot soap bubble ride. Many seemingly disastrous occurrences keep them from sharing a kiss, but they manage to finally express their mutual affection. Fry, once again a bystander to Leela's romance, remains heartbroken. Bender continues his plunder of the past for his masters until they're finally satisfied. Now that they're rich, the aliens are a bit more concerned about the end of the universe. They decide to erase Bender's memory after having him eradicate Fry. He manages to escape by reading the number from his own ass and using the time portal. The aliens figure he's lost in time, but Bender tells them Fry will always head back to his own time. They send Bender after him, and he does his best "Terminator" routine, sans the accent.

Bender arrives about a half hour before Fry and indulges in several cans of beer. Suddenly, for the first time in his life, he has to use the bathroom. He creates a time duplicate of himself so he won't miss Fry while he's in the can. Bender shows up from way at the end to put the time tattoo on Fry's ass while he's frozen, then departs. Fry arrives, pants still around ankles, and Bender prepares to kill him. Fry tries to reason with him and Bender's confusion causes him to enter auto-destruct sequence. Fry quickly shoves him into a freezer. The original Bender leaves the restroom in time to watch Fry leave and decides to kill himself rather than hunt Fry down. He enters a phone booth, thinking it's a suicide booth, and discovers a phone book. He looks up all the Fry's in the phone book and goes door to door. He makes several abortive attempts to find Fry before the scene cuts to Florida on November 8, 2000 as workers count the ballots from the Bush/Gore election. Al Gore is there celebrating his imminent victory and the golden age to come as Bender bursts in looking for Fry. His attempt to kill the wrong Phillip Fry destroys a basket of votes for Gore. (So that's what happened) Twelve years later, Bender is still searching and finds Fry's namesake nephew. He tells Bender that Uncle Phil went to the North Pole on a fishing boat. He heads to the pier and catches a glimpse of Fry. He attempts to catch Fry and through a series of mishaps lands outside of Pannuci's Pizza, directly after Fry's entry He firebombs the joint. Fry is dead.

Okay, now we start getting to the confusing stuff. Watching it isn't bad, but attempting to explain multiple scene changes and characters is not easy. I personally have always hated anything having to do with time travel; the paradox angle gives me a headache, lol. A lot of story and some great visual gags are covered in this particular section of the movie. It's more about advancing the plot than dazzling animation or character development. There are several references to the culmination of the plot, as well as past references from the series.

End Act 2

The scene cuts back to Bender preparing to leave for the past to terminate Fry and he reappears to tearfully report his success. The aliens erase the time code and the obedience virus from his hard drive. Bender wanders to memorial service for the Fry given by the crew, as they think he's lost in time. Bender tells them that he killed Fry, but Fry walk up to everyone's pleasant surprise. They want an explanation, so he fills in the blanks about what happened during Bender's search. He went back to Panucci's, got hungry, went back to the cryogenics lab for pizza, then sent himself back in time to get the hot pizza he'd delivered to I.C. Weiner five minutes earlier. He watches as his old self pushes auto-destructing Bender into a cryo-tube, then has a brief conversation with himself (while eating pizza, of course). The Fry that Bender kills in 2012 leaves and the pizza-laden Fry tries to steal his own wallet from his frozen self. He falls into the cryo-chamber until 2999, and refreezes himself for seven and a half years, thawing ten minutes prior to his arrival in the park. (Confused yet? If not, you should be.) Bender is glad he's alive, but he wants to finish the job. The Professor tells Bender that the Fry he killed was doomed anyway, being a time copy, and Fry wonders aloud what his copy's 12 years of life were like. A voice-over tells us that they'll never know, but we get to. Once again, we're back in 2000. This Fry goes back to the pizza place after conversing with the pizza eating Fry, rents the upstairs storage room and spends the next few years playing with his dog, enjoying time with his family, and missing Leela.

We cut back to the present where Nibbler recommends removing the code before the aliens sprunje it again. They do so, and the aliens spend more sprunjing a pants-less Fry. They let him go, at last satisfied that the code is gone. The scene once again cuts back to doomed Fry in 2003. He' vows to let go of Leela and move on to find his life's purpose. He sees a news story about a rare toothed female narwhal named Leelu. The juvenile fish washed ashore and won't eat without her mother. Fry knows how to get things to eat, so he decides his life's mission is to help Leelu. His lack of experience him almost costs him the job, but he gets Leelu to eat and has an obvious rapport with her, so the job is his. Back in 3007, the crew and the now ever present Lars is facing X-mas, homeless and huddled around a fire in an alley. Santa finds them and promises to return for them after collecting milk and cookies. Then we have a musical number in which the crew lists their various and sundry troubles, save for Leela and her love for Lars.

They become engaged, just a Santa comes back with a tree bomb. Lars defuses the bomb and everyone begins celebrating their news, save for Fry. Back in 2006, Fry and Leelu enjoy their relationship for four years until she's scheduled to be released back into the wild. Fry vows that he can't let it happen, as she'll never be happy without him. In the present, Leela and Lars go ahead with their budget wedding plans. Fry vows he must stop the wedding as she'll never be happy without him. Back in 2010, Fry and Mr. Panucci stand on the docks watching them transport Leelu away. Mr. Panucci encourages Fry to do something, and introduces him to his freighter-captain cousin. Fry commissions him to take him to the North Pole to get Leelu back. In the future, the wedding is beginning. The wedding begins, as the scene cuts to the North Pole in 2012. Fry has been searching for two years, finally finds Leelu and begins preparations to capture her. In the future-present once again, Lars and Leela are preparing to sign the marriage license, until Hermes' time duplicate body meets it's end under the chandelier. The Professor reveals all the details surrounding the doomed time copies to the assembly. Hermes urges them to continue the wedding despite his misfortune, but Lars refuses and walks out after calling the wedding off. Fry is happy, but Leela is inconsolable.

Lots of back and forth in this one, and once again it's harder to keep up while writing/reading than watching. The obvious parallels between both past and future Fry are bitter sweet and all that jazz, but you get the point pretty quickly. The jump-cutting seems a little unnecessary, but that's one person's opinion. Nothing of note concerning animation or character development. The jump from everyone being employed to living in an alley seems a trifle rushed, as does Lars' sudden inclusion into the group. I have to admit that I was glad to see they included scenes of Fry spending time with his dog. Thinking of that dog waiting all those years is part of what made "Jurassic Bark" so sad.

End Act 3

The aliens finally manage to scam the Earth out from under humanity and they're forced to move to Neptune. Now, everyone is freezing, huddled together, and living in constant fear of being attacked by yeti. Fear becomes reality and Leela uses the opportunity to channel her anger at being dumped to fight off the yeti, as the scene fades to Leelu struggling angrily in her enclosure aboard Fry's freighter in 2012. Fry is unable to cheer her and notices a male narwhal hovering around the boat. Thinking he's upsetting Leelu, he tells the captain to head for home at full speed. In 3007, the crew is repairing their shelter after the yeti attack, only to be attacked by Santa. But even Santa has been scammed out of his naughty list, and can't muster up enough anger to kill them. Leela decides that enough is enough and formulates a plan of attack.

They present the battle plan to Nixon, but he poo-poos it because of the remote-controlled solid gold Death Stars the scammers built with their stolen booty. Santa offers his toy-making facility to build weaponry. We get to see Chanukah Zombie, Kwanzaa Bot and Santa perform a multi-denominational musical number/montage of weaponry fabrication. Richard Nixon appoints Zapp Brannigan to lead the troops, and another montage of warfare begins. We see the unique methods that various characters from the show employ to attack. Hermes' head successfully co-ordinates the attack on all the Death Stars, finally wining back his woman; but the joy is short-lived. The scammers unveil the stolen doomsday device and the Professor finally learns who stole his device. Bender confesses to the actual theft just as the scammers arrive in their ship to give them thirty seconds to decide between unconditional surrender and total destruction, despite Leela's refusal to do either.

Bender apologizes to the Professor, and begs forgiveness with his back to the scammers revealing the real doomsday device hidden in his chest cavity. They load the device into the cannon and fire it into the aliens' ship, destroying it. Bender explains that while he was sawing off the Professor's hand, his mercenary nature led him to want to keep the device. He kept the empty fake case, then made the switch after he was out of the scammers control. New Years Eve finds Bender being awarded the Dirty Double Cross medal for the underhanded actions that saved the Earth. Lars arrives at the party to install Hermes' new body. He and Leela lock eyes and he rushes out, leaving a sobbing Leela with Fry. Fry tries to talk Leela into being happy, but she knows in her heart that Lars is the only man she'll ever love. Fry thinks a moment, and then asks Leela to meet him in the cryogenics lab in five minutes. In 2012, Fry is still struggling to understand Leelu's sadness, while the male narwhal is still dogging the ship. He realizes that Leelu and the male narwhal are lovers, and arranges to set Leelu free. Back in the cryogenics lab, Fry tricks Lars into meeting him where Leela waits. He tries to convince them to get back together, but Lars steadfastly refuses. He tells Fry that he deserves to know the truth, but before he can explain a bandaged Nudar bursts in and holds them at gunpoint. He explains that his platinum vest absorbed most of the radiation, and he there for the time code to go back and fix everything. Fry tells him that it was removed, but Nudar wants it from Lars, not him. Fry and Leela are understandably confused, but Lars is unmoved until Nudar threatens Leela. Leela tells Nudar that it won't do any good; Lars doesn't love her. Lars tearfully tells Leela he always loved her and says he'll reveal the code. Instead, he releases the frozen Bender on auto-destruct, and uses his body to weigh Nudar atop Bender. Lars body is the only one left after the explosion, revealing the tattoo of Bender on his ass.

We once again flash back to 2012, a crushed Fry returns from his arctic voyage as Bender lands outside. Bender firebombs the place once again, but we see that Fry's hair is burned away and his larynx is damaged by the smoke. He realizes that he's Lars, and freezes himself to wait for Leela in a thousand years. Unfrozen in 3002, he gets a job feeding heads using his narwhal experience. We fade to his video will, explaining the story, at his funeral. He reveals he left Leela after learning that a time duplicate was doomed at the wedding. They nominate Bender to go back in time to apply the time code to Fry's ass in the first place in order to wrap the whole thing up. Once again, Bender arrives in the future via the limestone cavern. The kicker is, he meets his copies and invited them to stay down in the cavern instead of coming up to reveal themselves. Scores of Bender's come up and begin to destruct, ripping a hole in the fabric of the universe. As Bender says in the final line of the movie, "Well, we're boned."

The space battle and the character's ships were all a visual treat. The jump-cuts seemed to make more sense and work a little better in this act. I cannot possible spend all the time I'd like including every pun, joke and visual gag in this act, or any of them for that matter. I was pleased that they didn't drag out the Lars storyline to another movie, but I can't help but wonder where this will leave Fry and Leela.

All in all, I enjoyed the movie. There were places that seemed to drag, and then too much action seemed to be stuffed into one place. But it did seem true to form. There were many cameos from past episode regulars like Cubert Farnsworth, Tinny Tim, Morbo, Scruffy, Barbados Slim etc. You won't miss any of the fun from the episodes, but it was a little disorienting for me to watch that much Futurama in one sitting. I was underwhelmed, but not disappointed. After watching the second movie, then watching this one again, it seemed to flow better. But I was left anxiously waiting for the next installment.

 

 

 

The Credits

 

Executive Producers: Matt Groening and David X. Cohen

Animation Executive Producers: Rich Moore and Gregg Vanzo

Director: Dwayne Carey-Hill

Starring: Billy West Kayet Segal John Dimaggio Tress MacNielle Maurice LaMarche

Guest Starring: Phil LaMarr Lauren Tom David Herman Dawwn Lewis Kath Soucie Frank Welker

Special Appearances by:

Coolio
Al Gore
Mark Hamill
Tom Kenny
Sarah Silverman

It Just Won't Stay Dead!

 

Futurama reviews are © 2008 Chrystal Litchford.
Not for reproduction without the authors express permission

Futurama names, characters and everything else associated with the series are the property of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp.

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