It pains me to have to say so, but Bender's Big Score makes a disappointing return for the Futurama series.

One of the great appeals of Futurama was the respect it showed for its own continuity. With Bender's Big Score, that's out the window. Here's the best example: Nibbler's secret life as a powerful sentient being, a subplot the original show spent four seasons building up to, is revealed 15 minutes into this production -- and for no reason; all it leads to is a futile attack on the alien scammers.

Not that this movie doesn't like pointing out Futurama continuity. At times the story looks like a contest to see how many obscure characters it can work in. There are loads of tacked-on and unnecessary cameos; Santabot is probably the most egregious. Meanwhile, important secondary characters like Dr. Zoidberg, The Professor, Zapp Branigan, Kif, and Amy Wong have very small roles.

And the main characters disappoint as well. The Fry-Lars-Leela love triangle is shallow, and lacks any of the poignancy we saw in "The Sting" and other Season 4 episodes. The lambasting of Fox for cancelling the show is heavy-handed; Family Guy did a much better job of this (and if you didn't like it, at least it was short). The alien scammers, while they did have some gross-out appeal with their "sprunging", weren't nearly powerful enough to take over the earth. Leela could have killed all three of them with one kick. And the whole time-travel story (which were once verboten in Futurama) was convoluted and nonsensical.

And above all else... it just isn't funny. I can't think of one funny thing that happens in the whole movie, or any memorable moments.

I can only hope that this disappointing effort was the result of trying to write a feature-length film for the first time, and that it indulged whatever need the creators have to reference themselves.

I honestly thought this show was dead and would never come back. I only watch the episodes once a year because I don't want to wear out my favourite animated show. To hear of the comeback was great. To have to wait quite a while, not so much. Seeing the final product, a real joy and pleasant surprise.

To be sure, they're a little rusty in places. Some of the lines, especially in the initial third of the film, are questionable and would not have made the final cut under the regime that provided us with the standard series. Hermes, only occasionally an entertaining character, gets too much screen time in a somewhat superfluous side plot featuring his equally unentertaining wife and his irritating enemy Barbados Slim. The villains - the scammer aliens - are disgusting when they should be fearsome. These are the things that lose the film a perfect rating, and are the sorts of niggles I would have expected after such a long hiatus - after all, much of Family Guy's comeback season (number four) is terrible when stacked up to the classic old episodes and a fair few new ones.

But I marvel at what they did right. It retains much of the trademark dynamic writing, taking in some of the same unbelievable and jaw-dropping spins on science and human/alien relationships and making us laugh when explaining away the continuity errors the writers were aware were needed to create an engrossing story.

It makes good use of screen time and never drags it heels which I felt both the Family Guy and Simpsons features did. In the end, both of those other features were such a plot compromise, where you ended up had so little bearing on where you started you had to laugh unintentionally. With this Futurama feature although the plot is bombastic in the greatest sense of the word (like a Queen record for example) it ties up everything I wanted to know in a timely fashion using classic storytelling techniques - and where necessary awesome, seamless and not gratuitous 3DFX - throughout.

Now I've covered the good and the bad, it is time to address the ugly - the backlash. Some have moaned that there isn't enough humour in this feature. To be honest, one of my favourite features of the original series was getting us away from the old cliché which seems to doom a lot of animated shows, namely: Cartoon = Funny. Yes it has several moments of great humour - a nice fifty-fifty of building set pieces and incisive one-liners - but it balances them well with a poignant story which I think they pull off as well as 'The Devils Hands Are Idle Playthings' if you consider that they had to pace it out over nearly ninety minutes which is over four times the length of a standard episode. It's a tall order for almost any script writer used to cramming in the jokes in thirty minutes or less, but these writers don't have a lot of trouble with it.

Another point of contention with the hardcore fans has been what a few of them have called a hopelessly complicated plot. This makes me laugh because the hardcore brethren praise the show constantly for intelligent post-geek humour then with the same breath criticise this new installment for breaking out of the shows comfort zone to use that same intelligence to create a mind blowing story. They must have been watching a different movie because I stuck with almost every twist and turn with awe, and the few I haven't resolved yet will - like all great works of art - reveal themselves with further observation.

In closing - to you hardcore fans who say this isn't a patch on the original episodes, get off your soap box and think yourself lucky there's anything new at all and secondly, I bet you only grew to love those episodes through repeated viewings so stop being so hard on what is a logical continuation of a great premise! 8/10

(NOTE: For those new viewers who missed a lot of the in-jokes that spilled over from the original series and who aren't sure why there is such an abundance of characters, go and buy the Season 1-4 box set from Amazon or eBay and it'll all make perfect sense.)

Futurama fans are finally delivered the package we've been waiting for. Holy zombie testicles has it been one helluva wait. From buying the volumes on DVD, to watching the repeats shown on Adult Swim, we've finally got some more Fry, some more Zoidberg, some more Professor Farnsworth, and oh yeah, even some more Zap. Futurama fans rejoice and be happy that Futurama is going to be back on the air, but the celebration begins with their first direct-to-DVD movie Bender's Big Score. And I tell you what, it was most definitely a score.

This is easily the most in depth Futurama story to date. You've got time-traveling duplicates running all over the place. One coming, the other going, one staying and another just hanging around with his butt hanging out. To summarize the story in a short and sweet way, Nude Alien Scammers (think internet scams) are taking over our Futurama world one by one, and guess where it begins, yep, with our pals from Planet Express. That is the main story, but you also have side-stories with Leela's new love, Hermes' lack of a body and a few others. All in all, this is one jam-packed story that should please all fans. One thing I'm sure some Futurama fans will argue about is the slight change to the theme song. It's almost the exact same, but now with a more "hip", electronic sounding addition. I don't mind it at all, but I do prefer the classic theme song....which plays at the end of the movie.

Speaking of pleasing all fans, you have almost every character you've met in the Futurama Universe saying Hi. Another reviewer said that none are introduced just for the sake of being introduced....now, that's a die-hard speaking right there. It's quite obvious they've set up minor side missions just so they could include many characters. They've got the Devil and his lil devil robots playing music for only one scene and have screen time for about 3 seconds. Besides this point, you do have almost every character you'd want to see. Though I didn't see my beautiful gigantic Amazon women! Though I'm sure they'll be back.

Bender's Big Score was a very entertaining movie. It was pretty much nonstop Futurama silliness from the get go. You have the touching moments as well, but the jokes are the ones that run the show. Unfortunately, and I say this tentatively, I really didn't laugh out loud that much. At 98 minutes I was expecting to be laughing at least every couple minutes or so. Not the case here, more like a once every 10 or so. But I'm me and you're you, so you may laugh all the time, but I found the jokes, a little too "familiar" most of the time. Example, Bender will talk about himself and say something like this, "Sure it's not a big deal for that guy. Wait I am that guy. Me, Bender." But sometimes that old Futurama joke still rings true. One example, Zoidberg gets hostile with Leela because she talks down about a dumpster. Zoidberg confronts her with a spikey head, "You stay out of my dumpster!" That was classic Zoidberg.

All in all, Bender's Big Score was a great reunion for all Futurama fans. It's not the funniest 98 minutes of Futurama I've seen, but it's very memorable and truly entertaining. It's been a while, but Futurama is back and I can tell you one thing, the Hypnotoad is back in action baby! All praise the Hypnotoad. All praise the Hypnotoad. All praise the Hypnotoad.....................................................