Street Date: June 24

Official Synopsis:
The thrilling conclusion to Futurama: Bender's Big Score. Bender and the planet express crew must contend with a massive cosmic team that sends the world into panic.
  
Our Take:
People didn’t seem to love the first installment in the Futurama line of straight-to-DVD flicks as much as I did. I don’t understand that, but I’m not here to refute anyone else’s claims. I am here to tell you, however, that for all you people who didn’t love Bender’s Big Score as much as the show itself, there’s no way you will be able to deny how classic Futurama: The Beast With A Billion Backs will prove to be over the years.

What’s so great about the feature-length format of these features is that it allows the creators to run completely amok. Here things start out with multiple love stories, which quickly eradicate themselves so that the crew can focus on saving the world from a scientific “anomaly” way up in deep space. This crack in the sky provides us with the titular Beast With A Billion Backs and it’s at this point that the movie turns itself into a pitch perfect parody of all those great, campy, Sci-Fi B-movies. I mean who doesn’t love a monster with billions of pink tentacles?

Not only do we get all that, but we also get what proves itself to be an incredibly well-directed and astonishingly animated deep space fight sequence that then ends with one of the funniest jokes in the entire flick. You’ll know it when you see it, trust me.

Special features include:

* Commentary by Matt Groening, David X. Cohen, Billy West, John Dimaggio, Maurice Lamarche, Michael Rowe, Claudia Katz, Peter Avanzino and Lee Supercinskli.

* Futurama: The Lost Adventure – A long-lost, full-length adventure produced for the Futurama video game…in 3-D, sort of! (30 minutes) – Features optional commentary by Matt Groening, David X. Cohen, Billy West, John Dimaggio, Maurice Lamarche, Michael Rowe, J. Stewart Burns and Lee Supercinskli. This would have been a lot better if it weren’t in such crappy 3-D animation.

* Storyboard Animatic (22 minutes) – The Beast With A Billion Backs, part one.

* Deleted Scenes (3 minutes).

* David Cross Featurette: Meet Yivo! (2 minutes) – David. Cross. Enough said.

* Blooperama: The Futurama Cast At “Work” (2 minutes) – I love being able to watch the actors as I hear the cartoons coming out of their mouths.

* 3-D Models With Animator Discussion (4 minutes).

* A Brief History Of Deathball (2 minutes) – I wish we could actually play this.

* Bender’s Game: A Sneak Peek At The Next Futurama Epic! (2 minutes) – Everyone loves epics.

I honestly hope they never run out of funding for these movies. Even if we’re only getting one a year, at least we’re getting new Futurama. And from the looks of what we’ve seen with Bender’s Big Score and The Beast With A Billion Backs and then what’s to come in Bender’s Game, these guys are only getting started.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

Overall Picture:
Movie: A
DVD: A+

- Landen Chase Pelish
Staff Writer