It was with polite smiles and ever-so-slightly-forced laughter that the first straight to DVD Futurama movie (2007’s Bender’s Big Score) was received. Not that it wasn’t fun, just that – well, after all that campaigning and carry-on to get the show un-cancelled, we all expected a little something more.

 

Having first been given the axe in 2003, Matt Groening’s intelligent and hilarious sci-fi series was sewn back together and resuscitated last year thanks to impressive DVD sales and some good old fashioned nerd protest. But with Bender’s Big Score, it seemed that the Futurama team were stepping a little too warily back into 31^st Century. The pacing was a bit off, character voices sounded a little strange, and much of the content seemed tailored to please die-hard fans rather than boldly going somewhere new and interesting.

 

 

It’s no small relief to report that The Beast With a Billion Backs hits the ground at full stride and not only takes things to new and interesting places – but to new and interesting places where there are tentacles. The plot carries on from the climax of the previous movie, where due to excess messing with the space/time continuum (that old chestnut), a dimensional rift was opened above New New York. Though the gigantic crack in the sky has remained dormant for a month, the people of Earth are anxious – and there is soon talk of sending a manned (or metal-manned) mission to explore the mysteriously anomaly. The Planet Express Crew get embroiled in the preparations, and before you know it there are tentacles plugging into necks, giant diamond shields cobbled around the planet, and vigorous inter-species intercourse.

 

Though the underlying plot is amusing, the highlight of The Beast With a Billion Backs is the development of themes, which is handled with a surprising amount of sophistication. Love is the central theme of the movie, and – to slip even further down the puckering glory hole of cliché – more specifically, the crazy things that love can make a person do. Unexpectedly, this time around Futurama doesn’t explore love through the tired old Leela-Fry relationship, but instead engages it through a host of story threads that weave back together during the movie’s final moments. It’s a satisfying conclusion which works well in tying events off, and as a result The Beast With a Billion Backs feels like a proper piece of narrative rather than a loose string of comedy references to Boz Scaggs.

 

 

In the end, though, Futurama is a comedy cartoon series, and above thematic wankery the most important question has to be: is it funny? Happily the answer is affirmative. Fry's five-way relationship with an especially-needy girlfriend is rich with veins of precious comedy ore, as is just about everything that old scamp Bender says. Even the visual gags are top notch, and consistently rise beyond simple pie-shot gags to levels which can only be described in terms of 'champagne comedy'. The Beast With a Billion Backs is as funny as the series at its best, and manages to sustain the humour for the entirety of its 89 minutes.

 

Like a piping-hot cockroach pizza from Family Bros., The Beast With a Billion Backs is delicious, but definitely isn’t perfect. Despite holding together better than Bender’s Big Score, the movie does feel a bit too much like four episodes stitched together (which it indeed is), lacking in fundamental plot cohesion. Musical numbers are also sorely missed, especially from a series that can pull them off so brilliantly (recall the fantastic Bender-Beck duet in Season 3’s ‘Bendin' in the Wind"’).

 

If The Beast With a Billion Backs is anything to go by, all that hollerin’ and a hootin’ to secure more Futurama was well worth it. With a further two movies set for release over the next year, it looks like a bright future for the future.

 

The Beast With a Billion Backs is on DVD release now.