Futurama: Bender's Game (2008)

Having been a little disappointed with "The Beast with a Billion Backs" I was pleased to find a return to form in this film. For the first time in the series of films we have a villain who was a regular from the television series rather than a one off villain, that villain is Mom. This time she is claiming that dark matter is running out so the price is rising, of course this being Mom there is plenty of dark matter; she just wants more money. Meanwhile Leela is having anger issues which lead to her being fitted with a shock collar and Bender is saddened to realise he doesn't have an imagination so decides to develop one... this is too successful and he finds himself believing he is a character in the game of Dungeons and Dragons he is playing. The first half of the film sets up this situation and follows Fry Leela and the Professor as they attempt to break into the dark matter mine to neutralise the dark matter for reasons I won't spoil here. As they are close to their goal something strange happens and they find themselves in the strange world of Bender's imagination, hear they find themselves on a quest that mirrors their mission in the real world.I enjoyed both parts of the film as they were full of good jokes. The fantasy section might not seem as funny to people who haven't seen The Lord of the Rings though as the quest is clearly based on the quest to destroy the ring... it even features Fry turning to a Gollum like creature as he nears the end of the quest. Some of the jokes aren't really suitable for younger viewers although I don't think they were ever the main target audience for the series. I'm glad that they used a regular villain this time as Mom is a lot of fun and as an established character no time is needed to show the viewer what she is like. Despite the title this is not a Bender centred story although he as a major role, Fry, Leela and the Professor's parts are more important to the story.

Fry: So it's all come down to this... a dungeon... and dragons! Zoidberg: I didn't see it coming.Unlike the previous film this really captured the weirdness, and humour that made me like the series in the first place. And for all who's a Lord of the Rings fan,this is a must see parody.The move starts with Bender feeling left out when he sees Cubert and Dwight playing Dungeons & Dragons and can't play because robots are not installed with imaginations. Yet after trying hard he starts to struggle with seeing the difference between the game and the real-world. He calls himself "Titanius Anglesmith" and gradually believes himself to be a real knight in the magical world of "Cornwood". As a result he's put in a mental hospital. Meanwhile Leela develops an anger problem and is forced to wear a shock-collar, until she learns to calm down. Meanwhile they discover a scam by Mom involving the high prices of dark matter. Farnsworth then reveals that while he was still working for Mom many years ago, dark matter was a completely useless substance. But while experimenting with it he inadvertently created two crystals: an energy crystal that turned dark matter into fuel, which Mom took for herself, and an opposite "anti-backwards matter" crystal, which Farnsworth kept hidden from her. Farnsworth says that should the two crystals meet, they would render dark matter completely useless once more. Frankly there are so many development in this film and I can't make a longer plot review without spoiling the whole story, I'll just say that later in the film the team is transported to another dimension where Benders imagination is real. There they are met by an armored Bender in his "Titanius" persona, who names his friends "Frydo" and "Leegola." Now I'll just finish by saying that this film is in my opinion, one of the funniest things to ever have come out from a TV series, but the two very different story lines were a little confusing, but I'll still give it a 9/10.

Matt Groening had spawned another winner with Futurama: Bender's Game. I would had never viewed Dungeons & Dragons as being that imaginative. I played Dungeons & Dragons when I was much younger, but did not possess the imagination that Bender displayed with that version. Bender was accused of not having an imagination at first, but when he finally grasped one, Bender could not separate fiction from reality. Frankly, I would had settled for Bender's version of "reality" because at least there were surprises at every corner. Sometimes surprises are better than the same mundane ruts we had forced ourselves into. The final battle between dark matter reminded me so much how we are dependent upon oil from foreign countries. At least the professor was smart enough to create another crystal that would eliminate dependency on dark matter when they were within a certain range of each other. I would certainly play this version of Dungeons & Dragons, mainly for the creativity and most importantly, for a more positive outcome for the world today. Futurama: Bender's Game was certainly worth the viewing pleasure and with Matt Groening at the helm, you cannot miss.

Direct-to-DVD movie; Genre: Animated Comedy, Science Fiction; Content Rating: Not Rated (contains animated violence and gore and pervasive scatological humor); Perspective: Contemporary (star range: 1 – 4); In the first DVD movie outing the folks at "Futurama" took on internet scammers and time travel. In the 2nd, dating and religion through an intergalactic monster movie. Now in the third feature-length film, "Bender's Game", they cobble together the energy crisis and Dungeons and Dragons. It's a melding that this time could have used a few more trips to the writing table to get it to solidify.In this self-contained adventure, the Planet Express crew suffers from the escalating price of rocket fuel dark matter, provoking Professor Farnsworth (Billy West) to go up against the maniacal head of Mom Corp (Tress MacNeille) who single-handedly controls the supply. Meanwhile, Leela (Katy Sagal) is disciplined for her violent temper and Bender (John DiMaggio) is accused of not having an imagination by the players of Dungeons and Dragons and is driven to robot madness by the game.The first act of "Game" is something of a dream come true. For the first time the crew headed by David X. Cohen, Matt Groening and director Dwayne Carey-Hill ("Bender's Big Score") take advantage of the feature-length running time to slow things down a bit. The first act is a refreshing turn of a character comedy for this normally lightning-fast sci-fi satire in which details set-up in the series are brought to a head, notably some repressed anger from Leela toward Zoidburg and her appropriately hilarious reaction to a shock collar, a somewhat clever flashback to Nibbler's first meeting with the crew and the long promised next epic confrontation with Mom. As possibly the show's best villain, it's welcome to see this Mom story finally realized and MacNeille is something of a powerhouse in the voice performance. This is her time to shine. This section of the movie is in flashes some of the best work the show has done.While D&D is established early and often, it still doesn't help cushion the wild, hard left turn the movie takes from its energy/Mom story to randomly and literally (and I do mean literally) dropping the characters into a D&D fantasy world. In this section the moderately funny, full of potential story is completely abandoned and the movie curls up and dies. Cohen, Carey-Hill and company totally indulge in their nerdiest impulses and to hell with the story. More disappointingly, they choose to parody some of the most obvious and mainstream fantasy sources – mostly "Lord of the Rings". The characters are put into a mix-&-match parody blender. All of a sudden Leela is a centaur, Fry is Frydo who acts like Gollum, the Professor is Gandolf who takes a "Star Wars" turn and Zoidburg is a giant cave monster. "Futurama's" strength has always been that it isn't mainstream. "Game" is a broad, easily accessible palette cleanser of toilet humor and forced gags after the sharp, iconoclastic and surreal "Beast With A Billion Backs" - which for my money is still the triumph of the movie series so far.The D&D section of the film didn't have to be a mindless lost cause. But the "Futurama" crew doesn't in any way make an attempt to resolve the first and 2nd acts of the movie with it. As randomly as our heroes entered the world, they leave it just in time for a quick wrap-up. The Game portion of "Game" is head-slappingly obvious filler that will probably send most viewers to the show's famously great commentary tracks for an explanation (Cohen and Groening give nothing). Instead of the creative or scientific explanation we've come to expect from Futurama, "Bender's Game" leaves us with the classically disappointing "It was All a Dream" ending. It's a punch in the face.The movie is randomly entertaining and I do love the extended mix of the show's theme that plays over the credits, but this is a hard one to recommend even to hardcore fans of the show.* * ½ / 4