Last night Henry, Neil and Dimple joined me to watch the newest feature length Futurama: Bender's Game.
We all had similarly mixed feelings about it: We laughed at various points during the episode but on balance felt that it was not vintage Futurama.
Afterwards we looked on IMDB and saw a mix of reviews that reflected our thoughts. The review that best expressed my feelings was by 'howTVshouldbe'. His summary was 'It starts as a refreshing character comedy but when the "Game" portion kicks in the movie just curls up and dies under it's own nerdy indulgences'.
The writers evidently had so many jokes for the subject matter that they were unable to self-edit. Good comedy needs pacing so that the audience can react and digest the jokes. Bender's Game threw the jokes in so thick and fast that I barely had time to react to a joke before the next one was cracked. There didn't seem to be any attempt to create any recurring jokes to give the show structure and rhythm either.
I wonder whether the writers were trying to create a layered show that would bear re-watching. Unfortunately the gags were too obviously telegraphed.
Bender's Game for me was a disappointment. The Futurama writers may be better off under the time constraints of a series based episodic format.
