Futurama: Bender's Big Score

After two years locked away in Fox's cryogenic holding cell of animated television shows (the same place they held Family Guy, I think), Futurama is back in the first of three feature-length, straight-to-DVD movies. For those unfamiliar with Matt Groening’s (The Simpsons) cult cartoon, it follows the adventures of Stephen J. Fry (Billy West), a slacker pizza delivery boy who unwittingly locks himself in a cryogenic sleep-chamber on New Years Eve 2000. One thousand years later Fry is revived in a bizarre future, filled with alcohol-swilling robots, one-eyed women, and a strange assortment of aliens. Fry finds a job working for his elderly descendant, Professor Farnsworth, at the Planet Express Interplanetary Delivery Service. In Bender's Big Score, the Planet Express gang travels to the Nude Beach Planet to make a delivery. While relaxing at the vacation resort they are swindled by a trio of naked con-artist aliens. The aliens take over the Planet Express business and discover that the formula for time travel has somehow been tattooed on Fry’s buttocks. Using the time travel code, the aliens send Bender (the wise-cracking, alcoholic robot) back in time to steal treasures from the past. But time travel comes with a dangerous price ? it might destroy the universe! The feature length format of this new and improved Futurama works much better than the half-hour TV episodes, allowing the show to develop a smart, funny sci-fi story that helps flesh out the world of the characters and explore some of the humorous complexity that science fiction is famous for. The DVD contains a slew of worthy extras, including commentary by creator Matt Groening and a long list of cohorts; a full length episode of Everybody Loves Hypnotoad, which will no doubt enter the lexicon of geek-humour; an interesting lesson on the "Math behind Futurama” (there are a surprising number of math-nerd jokes hidden in the Futurama universe); and a Terrifying Message From Al Gore animated short, starring characters from the show, and used as a promo for Gore's documentary An Inconvienient Truth. For fans of Futurama, Bender's Big Score is a must see, and for casual viewers of the TV show it is well worth checking out.