Futurama – The Specials [DVD]

These are brilliant!, 24 May 2010

By 

N. Snow “rivaldodenilson” (Hampshire) –

  

It was a bit annoying how the team at Futurama decided to release these feature length DVDs one by one over a year, but when you get them altogether in this collection it’s like owning Season 5. The show is as whitty, snappy, satirical and hilarious as ever, full of intriguing plots, copious amounts of play-on-words and the usual array of awesome characters. Each ‘film’ is great in it’s own way but I have given them each a rating and a short summary below:

1. “Bender’s Big Score”.
9/10. My favourite of all. I think that when I first watched it I found the overly complicated cross-time plot a little too much, but in actuality it is genius. Bender and the others get tricked into losing everything they own to a bunch of horrid nudist aliens hell-bent on scamming the entire world. Eventually they and some of the other inhabitants of earth have to defeat them . Of course, there is a hell of a lot more going on as each of the main chracters has their own hilarious part to play. Bender, Fry, The Professor and Zap Brannigan remain my favourite characters each with some fantastic moments.

2. “The Beast With a Billion Backs”.
8/10. The first half is absolutely brilliant. Admittedly the second half is a bit weird even by Futurama’s standards, but it still works overall. After failing to find happiness with his new girlfriend, Fry leaves the Universe via a tear in the space time continuum. Bender is also ready to abandon normal life as he joins a secret robot society and eventually declares war on all humans. However, Fry re-emerges, bringing with him a pretty creepy being whose tentacles end up penetrating every human on Earth in a bid to connect everyone. As I said, it’s a really silly plot, but still very funny.

3. “Bender’s Game”.
7/10. Just about the worst one here, but still very good. I think the problem here is the plot. The Professor and the others set out to destroy Mom’s dark matter business while Bender goes mental as he overdoses on playing Dungeons and Dragons with Hubert and the other children. At some point The crew all fall into a pit and end up in Bender’s imagination, where a pretty decent parody of Lord of the Rings takes place. The two separate plots before and after they fall in the hole are both pretty entertaining, but as I said they are kind of stuck together in a pretty strange way. Still good though.

4. “Into The Wild Green Yonder”.
9/10. A very close second. Leo Wong is about to destroy half od the universe in order to make an Uber-golf course. Bender has an affair with the Don Bot’s wife, Fry is recruited by a sttarnge cult because his brain may be a key to defeating evil and Leela joins a mouthy group of activists to try and stop Wong. The storylines all come together with funny consequences. I loved this one. Really funny and very well written.

So to summarize, if you’re a faan and you’ve not seen these yet then whaat the hell are you waiting for? As always, the episodes get better when you watch them more than once and they are great just to have on in the background when you’re working or something like that. If you like other shows like Family Guy or The Simpsons then I’m sure you’ll enjoy these. If you’ve never watched anything like that, but enjoy a good bit of Sci-Fi or Fantasy then you may still enjoy these.

Just give them a try, they’re a bargain for £15.

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