You already know I was disappointed by the film, but if you fancy a spoiler-laden review of the film, you need only read on. I’ve kept the majority of this post hidden from the front page, for rather obvious reasons.
The review contains spoilers for both Futurama: Bender’s Big Score and, rather oddly, a mild spoiler for the Doctor Who Series 3 finale. If you’ve not seen either yet, I suggest you leave this review alone for now.
Firstly, I want to make it very clear - I enjoyed the film. It was entertaining and amusing, and it’s great to see some brand spanking new Futurama. However there’s a lot of the film that simply didn’t mesh for me. The two musical numbers, for instance, really seemed to stand out and didn’t work for me. Neither of them were particularly amusing. The overuse of the “me, Bender” joke started to wear thin after the first hour. And, of course, there’s the simple fact that the plot didn’t seem to make logistical sense.
The trailer for the film made it seem as though the Nibblonians would have a much bigger role, and for this reason I made sure that Dad and Linda had seen “The Day The Earth Stood Stupid”, “Roswell That Ends Well” and “The Why of Fry” before we watched the film. As it happened, this was largely unnecessary - the Nibblonians do appear in the film, but very briefly. They launch a daring attack on the film’s antagonists (alien scammers) which fails, and then they are never seen again. When you take into account the fact that the reason the Nibblonians attacked the scammers is because they had unlocked the secret of paradox-free time travel which could, after repeated use, destroy the very fabric of the Universe, it seems rather questionable that they wouldn’t attempt to launch a second attack, using ships slightly more powerful than the “kitten class” ships they were using. Nibbler also appears sporadically during the film to remind the scammers and the Planet Express crew during the film to warn them about the dangers of paradox-free time travel, but doesn’t actually do anything about it. So, really, Nibbler reveals his secret identity for no real reason whatsoever.
The whole usage of Time Travel is, due to its “paradox-free” nature, very, very confusing. And what’s more once you realise the plot is about Time Travel (which will be obvious to anyone who has seen the aforementioned trailer) then you very immediately realise that a newly introduced character, Lars, is in fact an older version of Fry (he is, in fact, Fry’s alternate-past paradox-duplicate future self - confused yet?). The film takes a long time for this information to be revealed, and when it is revealed it’s not done in a particularly well thought-out manner. It’s sloppy, for the most part.
And lest we forget that this film manages to trample rather expertly over one, maybe even two of the series’ most touching moments. The biggest buggering of established continuity happens when Fry’s alternate-past self returns to his family after travelling back to January 1st 2000, and continues to live his life as normal. Even still, his brother Yancy still has a son named Phillip, and what’s more young Phillip has met and spoken to the uncle for which he has named, and renders the entire sentimentality of the episode “The Luck fo the Fryrish” entirely moot. The film also shows exactly how Fry’s dog, Seymour, became Fast Fossilized, but ruins the ending of the episode “Jurassic Bark” where it is revealed that Seymour didn’t have to wait for Fry to come back, because his alternate-past self did go back.
Are you confused yet?
With the heavy reliance on paradoxes and people from the future going back to live in the past even though their present selves are still living in the future, you’d be mistaken for assuming this was all part of the “Utopia/The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords“, and indeed the ending mirrors the climax of “The Sound of Drums”, with the sky cracking asunder and a paradoxical army of robots existing in the present (i.e. future) timeline.
For its flaws, however, the film is entertaining, and there are some truly inspired moments. Ultimately, the Futurama writing staff are about laughs and not continuity, and and the film has them in spades. The plot may well have been messy and I may not have enjoyed the musical numbers, but there are plenty of brilliant gags and great jokes here that would draw me back for a second viewing.
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