stevcoll I saw "Bender's Big Score" after having just watched all the old seasons, so they were fresh in my head. Unfortunately, the film had some serious issues that kept it from achieving its true potential:1) Way Too "Over The Top"The phrase "if it's not broken don't fix it" comes to mind. Futurama had its own hilarious brand of humor and intelligent writing. With this film, I immediately sensed that the writers were going the direction of The Matrix 2/3 or Pirates 3, where it seemed the only thing that mattered was "making the movie more epic" at the expense of the plot and quality entertainment.The beginning of this movie was by far the worst. Things were kicked up about 10 notches too far and it wasn't pretty.. it was like all the characters went on an energy drink binge before "filming". My friend and I looked at each other in disbelief as Leela asked, "What about all our fans?" before a bunch of actual fans started blowing behind her.. seriously??? This is the same show that spoofed Elton John as the Pharoah's musical entertainment at his funeral.. Now that's humorous!! (as Zoidberg would say). There was certainly no hearty laughter resulting from watching this movie..2) Writing and PlotThe storyline itself is poorly written, as if they were trying to cram every possible minor character, location, and subplot from every episode ever made into this one film. This creates some very shallow and pointless situations.Brannigan for example is on screen for about 30 seconds, and says nothing funny at all. Oh wait I'm sorry.. He told Kif to "cover his knees because they're cold". Wow, that's some real comedic genius there writers...SantaBot appears in the worse cameo of all, having an absolutely senseless role and to make things worse, performing in what's sure to be known as the worst song ever produced on Futurama to date.The Leela/Fry/Lars storyline is irritating and shallow, and in my opinion the whole Leela/Fry thing has been extremely overused. It's dull material. Nobody cares that Leela is still trying to find love for the 400th episode and has found another shallow moron, and nobody cares that Fry is still whining about not having her.The Fry/Whale subplot was really dumb and silly as well. Apparently the writers thought they could replicate some of the magic from "Jurassic Bark" (and honestly aside from the ending I wasn't a huge fan of that one..) But you can't pull the same trick twice, come on writers do something original.I actually liked the alien/scam plot as it was fairly original. Of course everyone including Bender and the professor falling for the phishing scam was certainly ridiculous and too over-the-top.Bender (as usual) is the highlight of the movie. I enjoyed watching him say those numbers and then jumping into the time portal. His humor wasn't as sharp as in old episodes, but it was funny to see him being completely obedient to those aliens for most of the movie.Finally, the ending was not too bad. Seeing Hermes control all the spaceships with the music was a cool part, but Lars turning out to be Fry was silly.. Apparently Leela is going to continue her stupidity with dating any other guy in the universe but Fry (unless it's an older Fry.) So silly and dumb at this point...3) Voice ActingUsually a high point of this series, some of it was way off. Zoidberg practically has a new voice (very muffled.. I didn't like it). Scruffy and Elzar also sounded strange. Come on voice-actors at least review the old episodes and don't just make up a new voice! Lazy!4) SONGSWOW were they terrible! The one with SantaBot was absolute trash. I was never much for songs in animated series (the robot devil song was OK), but the songs in this movie are an embarrassment.Overall, a big disappointment compared to the show itself. People certainly overrated it because they were "excited that Futurama was back". I certainly hope the other movies are a large improvement.

lewiskendell I remember how excited I was on the day that I found out that there were going to be four new, direct-to-DVD, Futurama movies. The original series is still one of my favorite shows, ever, and I never thought that I'd get to see Fry & Co. again after their untimely demise. The very fact that Bender's Big Score exists to be reviewed, is wonderful. It's a genuine delight to be able to see all these beloved (at least by me) characters again. Now for the disappointing part. Bender's Big Score is probably the least entertaining adventure that the Planet Express crew has gone on. The plot is an uninteresting, hard to follow, mess. There is way too much jumping about in time, that serves to only complicate the story. A story that starts to feel like it's gone on for way too long, with about 20 minutes still left before the end. Worse, it's all just not very funny. The writers obviously needed a trial run to get back into the Futurama groove, and BBS got the unfortunate duty of serving as that guinea pig. The three movies that followed are much closer in quality to the show, so it's nice to see that the first Futurama movie was not made in vain. The song numbers were also uncharacteristically bad. These are the same people who brought us "Robot Hell", so clearly they know how to write a good song. Here, there are a couple of absolutely dreadful numbers that aren't catchy, memorable, or even well-performed. I wish they would have left them out of the movie entirely - they were genuinely that bad. It may sound like I absolutely hated Bender's Big Score, but that wasn't the case. There were a few instances of classic humor, and a story with such a heavy focus on Bender simply can't be completely horrible. But, amidst all the cameos of my favorite characters and locations, I soon came to the realization that this movie was nowhere as good as the Futurama that had come before (or the movies that followed). This is a series that's known for razor-sharp wit, humor, and occasional genuine emotion...and Bender's Big Score failed to deliver in all those areas.

Jeff Stone (straker-1) Terrible, TERRIBLE songs. Not a solitary laugh out loud moment. Series continuity is thrown out the window. A dull "story" that was just a grand tour of the show's best moments - bolted on to a supposedly clever and confusing time travel plot that was in fact neither. Racism everywhere, primarily anti-Semitism (the Scammers are obvious Jewish stereotypes) and the usual 'laugh at the darkies' rubbish you always get with Hermes and his family. Cruelty, disloyalty, mean-spiritedness and arrogant misanthropy masquerading as 'satire'. Which wasn't ever funny or thought-provoking. This travesty only gets 2/10 from me because it was well-animated. The almost universal acclaim this *extremely* poor movie gets just confirms for me that with fans you can put any old rubbish on screen with the Futurama logo attached, and they'll think it's the Dark Knight of animated comedy. And I kinda liked the series, too. Awful, just really awful. Did I mention the songs were terrible?

gizmomogwai Futurama returns with this straight-to-DVD movie and a few others which will be released in time. Futurama was a quality show (including in visuals; the animation is the same here but after all this time it's not as impressive as it used to be). Bender's Big Score has some good, light humour and a few laughs, but it's not close to, say, the Roswell episode, Godfellas or The Sting. Some jokes made me laugh (age jokes about the professor are always good) but others, for example the fly mutant, did nothing for me.The movie begins by using veiled jokes about the TV show being cancelled and then returning; these kind of jokes can be smart, except we've seen them before (for example, the episode SOBs from Arrested Development). We are then treated to a scene at a nude beach with revealing shots of Leela and Amy (we see Leela's buttocks but the rest is covered). However, the movie then introduces its villains- nudist aliens- who are weak and uninteresting. They can sense and actively seek "information," something the writers came up with solely to move the plot along. The aliens also take over Bender by means of a virus and, discovering the secret of time travel written on Fry's body, send Bender to the past to steal treasures. The storyline becomes a little complex with all this time travel, and in addition, one would need to know the TV series to appreciate the movie. The plot is passable, though some of it (the narwhal, for example) isn't compelling or subtle.This DVD also comes with an episode (or would it count as a short film?) featuring the character Hypnotoad. It was a funny joke in the series, but here, he's mostly just staring at you with his hypnotic vision- there's virtually nothing here, so it's pretty much worthless. Altogether, an okay DVD.