Futurama: Bender's Big Score

What’s the Story?

In FUTURAMA: BENDER'S BIG SCORE, the rag-tag Planet Express team has been shut down by their owners. But first they have one last shipment, to the Nude Beach Planet. There, the crew naively give away their email addresses on a petition, and suddenly find themselves inundated with loopy sexual enhancement ads and get-rich-quick Nigerian prince schemes. But when Professor Farnsworth responds to the latter, suddenly the crew and the company belong to a race of evil, spam-spreading aliens whose only plan is to bilk the Earth of all its wealth. When the aliens discover the code for time travel tattooed on Fry's butt, can the gang stop the aliens from pillaging the planet and robbing them of the Earth they love?

Is It Any Good?

If The Simpsons is a sometimes too adult for kids, then Futurama is its big brother: More raunchy, more sexual, and still funny.

First off, the premise of a race of spam-spreading aliens is hilarious. So are the jabs at Fox (a miracle elixir is made of "Box" executives killed and ground up). And some of the antics are even funny. But a lot of the action is overly complicated and stupid. After all, if Bender had failed to simply put the tattoo on Fry's butt at the end, the calamity of the film never would have happened. Long-time viewers of the show are likely to love the nostalgia of the film -- it includes almost every long-running joke in the show's history -- but like The Simpsons Movie, it can seem more like a few episodes pasted together.