To See, Or Not To See

Slice of Delicious Cake Metaphor

Futurama: The Beast With a Billion Backs
"It's Like a Movie With This Happening In It!"

by Russell Burlingame, ComicRelated.com

Good news, everyone: The second Futurama direct-to-video feature, tomorrow's Futurama: The Beast With A Billion Backs, is better than the first one!

But let's not get too carried away too quickly. If it were distilled down to just a half-hour episode of the old weekly TV show, with the same basic premise and all the laughs intact, this hour-and-a-half-long feature would be hard-pressed to measure up to the top ten or so episodes.

Indeed, one of the reasons that so many fans were so enthusiastic about Futurama coming back as a series of direct-to-DVD releases was that certain episodes (like "Roswell That Ends Well," for example) had the kind of scope that just cried out to be expanded to feature length. So it was that last year's Bender's Big Score--with a formulaic plot and way too much screen time given to one-dimensional villains who didn't deserve it--disappointed far more than it probably should have, considering it was still funnier than about 80% of what's on TV right now.

On their website, Fox has billed The Beast With a Billion Backs as "the conclusion to" Bender's Big Score, but I'm not sure where they get that. At the outset it's clear that the Planet Express crew has undergone some major changes since the last time we saw them. A rip in the fabric of spacetime threatens to destroy the universe, and Bender's direct contact with the rip sends him rocketing back to earth with only vague memories that his ass had hurt during the encounter. Still, the crew is hung up on their personal tasks as Fry moves in with his new girlfriend (voiced by Brittany Murphy) and Amy and Kif plan their wedding.

The wedding goes off just fine, which is rather too bad because it's about forty seconds later that, believing science had exhausted all its chances to examine the rip--believed to be a gateway between universes--Earth President Richard Nixon's Head orders a pre-emptive assault on the other universe and Kif is once again drafted to fight at the side of Zap Brannigan, the most incompetent boob the United Planets can't stop promoting through their military ranks.

Stowing away on the warship is Fry, whose girl troubles drive the dominant life form on the other side of the rip--a trillion-tentacled squid monster--to believe that all humans are lonely and miserable. This of course leads to the monster trying to abduct and brainwash the entire human race in the hopes of forming a connection with us.

Again here, there's just too much time given to an uncompelling villain, but at least here David Cross (and the writers) delivers a more nuanced performance than the mustache-twirling, nudist ninnies of Bender's Big Score.

A few of the plot developments--presumably inserted into the story to maintain a status quo for future films or a potential return of the TV show--are rather tired and one wonders why a move would be made to move the plot forward if it will only be reversed by the end of the flick (which will, like the previous film, be translated into 4 episodes for broadcast).

There are some nice callbacks to the show, though, with Zoidberg's uncle (aging film comedian Harold Zoid) making a brief cameo where he delivers only one line--about how he's got a role in a direct-to-DVD movie but only has one role; the cat lady who was at one point a Planet Express stockholder being taken by the squid monster; and Bender, in a fit of despair, making a trip to the suicide booth where he first met Fry--and again trying to use a coin with a string around it to avoid paying for his suicide.

Ultimately, the film is flawed but enjoyable, and its improvements over its predacessor gives further hope for the next two films scheduled for release over the next year and a half or so. When Fry is faced with the notion of coping with his girlfriend's open relationship with other men, or potentially losing her altogether, he's offered a clumsy metaphor by Zoidberg, which asks, "If there's a delicious cake, isn't it better to have one slice, than to have none at all?" That might be the question Futurama fans need to ask themselves before being too critical of these movies.