So, I just finished watching the Futurama movie for the second time in two days (for the commentary, obviously), and I have to say, I'm still unsure about this whole thing.
As a guy with huge nerd boners for sci-fi, fast-paced comedy AND David X. Coen, this was set to be the triple-boner event of the season as far as I was concerned, and maybe all that build-up made some disappointment inevitable. Honestly, I don't think I would have been fully satisfied unless the movie ended with Bender looking directly to camera and saying “Hey you, Michael Swaim; come have adventures with me in space! I'll bring the Slurm!”
I'll list the awesome stuff first, which on the surface is the vast majority of the product, which you should totally buy
A Bender-centric plot that addressed the issue of Fry and Leela as a couple and referenced the series' history in classic Futurama fashion.
One of the cleanest, most complex, most well-executed time travel plots in recent memory.
A full-length bonus episode of Everybody Loves Hypnotoad, which as you may have guessed is primarily a twenty-two minute clip of hypnotoad staring at the camera, with enough cutaways and gags thrown in to make it one of the funniest wastes of time ever packaged onto a DVD.
The promise of three more movies to come.
Plenty of meta-conscious nods to the show's cancellation, and slams against the all-too-deserving TV execs who gave the thing the axe in the first place.
All told, I really enjoyed it, although the two songs they put in sucked (I'm not sure what the deal was with those).
So what the hell is my problem? Couldn't tell you really, except that through the whole thing, I never seemed to laugh. And that's saying something, since during the run of the series I lost a number of friends to my inability to go thirty seconds without spewing a quote from the show. Yes, I'm one of those
people. And no, I don't regret driving my girlfriend to suicide; thank you very much for bringing it up.
Maybe it's been so long I'm just not immersed in the world anymore. Maybe I was so excited my mind shut down with pleasure and refused to absorb the humor. Maybe it's just plain not as funny as it once was. Maybe I'm overthinking this by a significant margin.
In any case, I turn to you, Cracked Blog readership: Did I like the Futurama movie?
Also, does anything in this post make me sound racist? Because if so, I just fucking give up.
