Movie: "Futurama: Into The Wild Green Yonder"
Year: 2009
Rated: PG
Genre: Animation
Directed by: Peter Avanzino
Writing credits: Ken Keeler, David X. Cohen
Reviewer: Dr. Boogie
Posted: 3/1/2009
Plot: Billionaire and owner of the planet Mars, Leo Wong, is planning to turn a large portion of the Milky Way galaxy into the largest minigolf course in the universe. To finish his course, he plans to destroy a violet dwarf system teeming with life. Leela joins a feminist/environmentalist protest group to stop him. After an accident leaves him with the ability to read minds, Fry is inducted into a secret society working to preserve the same star system in order to ward off an ancient evil.
Review: At their best, the last three Futurama movies were kind of funny. Mostly, though, they were pretty terrible, especially when weighed against the old reruns on cable. Luckily, the series managed to end on a high note with this last installment.
One of the hardest parts of seeing the series revived was witnessing the failure to revive the old style of humor that made the show so great. The humor of the original episodes relied more on subtlety, coupled with the occasional pop culture reference. In contrast, most of the humor from the first three movies was so bland and sophomoric that it would have seemed more at home in a modern episode of the Simpsons. The good news is that the writers finally got back on track with the joke-writing for Into the Wild Green Yonder. The bad news is that they waited until what maybe the end of the series to get there.
I was also pleasantly surprised by the film’s environmentalist message not being overemphasized. In the past, environmentalism has served as a launching point for the plots of episodes like “Some Like It Hot” and “The Birdbot of Ice-catraz”, but when used as the basis for Bender’s Game, the pro-environmentalist themes were much more heavy-handed. Thankfully, though the plot of Into the Wild Green Yonder does stem from those same notions, it manages to seem more like a typical doomsday-type scenario coupled with dirty hippies.
I guess the overall point I’m trying to get across is that if you didn’t think the first three Futurama movies were all that funny, prepare to be surprised. It lags a bit at the beginning, but Into the Wild Green Yonder finally manages to nail the humor that made the show popular in the first place. It’s worth noting that while the previous three movies were all part of a single ongoing story, the events of this film are more or less like a standalone episode of Futurama, with only a single, passing reference to the events of Bender’s Game. Maybe that’s what made the episodes of the show work so well, or maybe the writers realized that the last movies were pretty lame. Either way, the show is finally funny again.
Overall rating:
(Scored on a 0.5 - 5 pickles rating: 0.5 being the worst and 5 being the best)