Futurama: Bender’s Game (2008)

(On DVD, December 2009) Even sub-standard Futurama is better than no Futurama… or at least that’s what’s worth remembering when seeing this third straight-to-DVD feature revival of the TV series.  While there’s little that’s specifically wrong with Bender’s Game, it does seem to lag compared to the other films, and never more so during a third act that takes place in a fantasy world take-off on Dungeons and Dragons.  The jokes seem muted, and depend more on recognition of Lord of the Rings references than anything else.  It’s geeky humor of another sort, of course, but it does seem a bit more off-kilter than the series at its best.  Otherwise, the Futurama mythology is further explored with Dark Matter exploitation details, more of Nibbler and Farnsworth’s history, and another showdown with Mom.  Fans will watch it anyway, but the result is merely entertaining, just not exceptionally so. The DVD adds an entertaining audio commentary track that actually makes the film fun to watch a second time, as well as a few short features that show how much fun it was to work on the show. The best extra, however, is a short anti-anti-piracy PSA featuring Bender, willing to steal, well, anything.