Futurama: Bender's Big Snore
Holy smokes, this latest entry in the Futurama series was awful - nearly unwatchable. While watching, I kept checking to see how long the movie was, in the hopes that it would be over soon.
Bad parts include:
- The beginning, when all the characters introduce themselves as if we've never met them before.
- The moment 3 minutes after we meet Lars, when we figure out his obvious secret, but realize that the "reveal" of this "secret" won't happen until the end of the movie.
- The unfunny and boring exposition needed to make the convoluted time-travel story work out.
- The over-long cameos by characters like Al Gore and Santa Claus.
- The fact that every character had to get a segment in the movie, even if they didn't drive the plot (like Hermes' contribution).
- The internet spam/nigerian scammer plot device. Hey, 1999 called, they want their try-hard talking point back, even though it wasn't funny then.
- The foreshadowing, which is plainer than a Quaker's studio apartment.
- The badmouthing of Fox executives, which sacrificed humor for the sake of revenge.
We've seen this problem before, whenever an episodic show does something unusual (like the series finale, or a movie, or a special episode produced by different people). They think they have to get every character in, do character development just for the sake of being different from the episodes (thank you very much, Brent Spiner), wrap up loose ends whether the solution makes sense or not, and get some celebrity star power in to attract a large audience (even though the audience is the people who used to watch the episodes). Also, while their demands are higher, their capabilities are lower. The project is so important that they don't want to take risks, even though all the best episodes were the result of big risks. They also may have a different director or producer, and can afford more expensive effects which don't improve the storytelling. Did all that fancy shading and 3D work in The Simpsons Movie make it funnier?
I've seen some wall-to-wall borefests in my day, but this anesthetic sleep-in outbores them all.
Bad parts include:
- The beginning, when all the characters introduce themselves as if we've never met them before.
- The moment 3 minutes after we meet Lars, when we figure out his obvious secret, but realize that the "reveal" of this "secret" won't happen until the end of the movie.
- The unfunny and boring exposition needed to make the convoluted time-travel story work out.
- The over-long cameos by characters like Al Gore and Santa Claus.
- The fact that every character had to get a segment in the movie, even if they didn't drive the plot (like Hermes' contribution).
- The internet spam/nigerian scammer plot device. Hey, 1999 called, they want their try-hard talking point back, even though it wasn't funny then.
- The foreshadowing, which is plainer than a Quaker's studio apartment.
- The badmouthing of Fox executives, which sacrificed humor for the sake of revenge.
We've seen this problem before, whenever an episodic show does something unusual (like the series finale, or a movie, or a special episode produced by different people). They think they have to get every character in, do character development just for the sake of being different from the episodes (thank you very much, Brent Spiner), wrap up loose ends whether the solution makes sense or not, and get some celebrity star power in to attract a large audience (even though the audience is the people who used to watch the episodes). Also, while their demands are higher, their capabilities are lower. The project is so important that they don't want to take risks, even though all the best episodes were the result of big risks. They also may have a different director or producer, and can afford more expensive effects which don't improve the storytelling. Did all that fancy shading and 3D work in The Simpsons Movie make it funnier?
I've seen some wall-to-wall borefests in my day, but this anesthetic sleep-in outbores them all.