Futurama: En el lejano y salvaje verde

Direct-to-DVD movie; Genre: Sci-Fi, Animated Comedy; Content Rating: Unrated (contains adult content & animated violence); Available: DVD and Blu-Ray; Perspective: Contemporary (star range: 1 – 4);

After 4 hugely rewarding seasons on the Fox Network (not that they knew it) and 3 DVD movies, Matt Groening and David X Cohen's cancelled, cult sci-fi saga "Futurama" comes to a rollicking close with "Into the Wild Green Yonder". The movies were a reward for those who got slapped in the face by Fox's abrupt cancellation and were underwhelmed by the run's finale, "The Devil's Hands are Idle Playthings" in which the show micro-focused its entire story down to a love story between future fish-out-of-water Phillip J. Fry (Billy West) and one-eyed mutant space pilot Leela (Katy Segel). "Yonder" is the epic finale we've been waiting for and I'm thrilled to report it delivers.

As always, "Futurama's" focus is still its unique cast of characters and their conflicting motives, but "Yonder" is a bigger, funnier, more epic ending, worthy of the vast, detailed universe this series created. As a movie, it's the best of the 4 DVDs which says a lot given how highly I still regard "The Beast With A Billion Backs". Where "Beast" was an ambitious and sharp story it still felt disjointed and episodic, where "Yonder" is the first film to feel like a real theatrical release movie from start to finish. It's smoother, with a more complex story, than "The Simpsons Movie".

As with any "Futurama" story, it would be almost criminal to describe the plot: both because it is so delightfully convoluted in its accurate and liberal basis in science fact and sci-fi convention and I do not wish to spoil the numerous wonderful twists and turns herein. However, in the first few minutes events transpire that set our heroes on a collision course toward series end and saving the galaxy: Al Gore-style! Amy Wong's (Lauren Tom) dad is building a new casino on Mars, but his plans to put in a massive mini-golf park threaten the endangered species of the entire galaxy which raises the ire of eco-femenistas (led by radio genius Phil Hendrie in duel role as a female member of the show's Waterfall hippie family and her brother) as well as a secret society Fry gets involved with when an accident leaves him with the ability to read minds. Oh yeah, and Bender has an affair with the Don-Bot's wife.

Almost none of the action in "Yonder" takes place on Earth or at Planet Express. With Leela joining the femenists, Fry in a double-cross to save the universe and Bender dodging the mob and joining up with Zapp Brannigan (again West), the characters spend the movie away from or at odds with each other. Cohen and co-writer Ken Keeler have scripted a clever chess game where each story and each motive weaves together beautifully, all building to a finale that finds that perfect balance between being a thrilling sci-fi adventure and a satisfying character conflict for our 3 unlikely heroes.

"Yonder" is also the funniest movie of the 4 and at times more laugh-out-loud than the series. When Fry (now reading minds) and Bender (with the DonBot's lucky Robot's Foot - his own) go head to head in a high-stakes poker tournament the scene is one of the funniest and most cleverly constructed the show has ever done. "Yonder" has a lot of fun with Bender in this movie. Bender is the kind of anti-hero character that usually has his own story as it is hard to write him into helping the gang save the world in the primary story without cheating his character's nature. "Yonder" finds a perfect place for him. The movie also has a load of fun with the eco-femenists. Few shows make fun of women the way "Futurama" has the balls too with Cohen and Keeler's unique vision of male/female clichés turning "Yonder's" conflicts into a damn-near battle of the sexes. It's refreshing. The movie gets less riotous as the 3rd act comes and the stakes of the story are raised, but that's the case with any action/comedy.

This is a fun one, people. "Into the Wild Green Yonder" fires on all cylinders, deliver the kind of originality and imagination that only "Futurama" can. As funny and poignant as any episode of the series. Both a great movie and a great finale for this much loved series. Don't miss it.

* * * * / 4

Futurama really is such a "Meh" show and their attempt at revitalizing it with wall to wall feature movies really did it no favors in my eyes.

In a generic plot featuring all your usual favorites this essentially feature length episode alike the others has it's moments and there are laughs to be had but considerably too few. The plot is instantly forgettable and reminds me again why I never really gave the television show the time of day.

It's not that it's bad, it's just distinctly mediocre. It's like The Simpsons, but without the overwhelming charm and fantastic characters.

If you like Futurama you'll likely enjoy this, otherwise hop skip and jump over it.

The Good:

There are a few laughs to be had

The Bad:

Not as funny as it should be

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

Tin foil hats are a growth industry

Kansas is unfamiliar with evolution

You can't sue the military

Feminism angle wasn't satire, it really does seem to have gone that way

'Into The Wild Green Yonder' is the 4th movie in the very popular Futurama movie series.Just like the television show and the first 3 movies, 'Into the Wild Green Yonder' is filled with lots of crude and suggestive humor.Most of it is funny, as you'd expect.The movie is also surprisingly sexist.The main targets in the movie are woman.Not just woman, but feminists.If you were a feminist trying to struggle for the right to vote, then you will be shocked and appalled by this movie.Just try not to overreact and form a feminist group in order to cancel the TV show and find every copy of this movie and burn them.As entertaining this movie may be, it does lack the certain spark the first 3 movies had.My favorite movie in the series is 'Bender's Game', and this film isn't near to being as good.Still, I found 'Into the 'Wild Green Yonder' to be a funny and entertaining movie that fans of the show and movies will enjoy.If you don't like the show, then you can bite my shiny metal ass.

The fourth (and, at time of writing, final) Futurama movie is the one that cements the standard for the collection of DVD's by making a majority of the four. Having enjoyed Bender's Game more than the other two films, I was hoping that the third film had been a turn away from the lesser first two. Instead though Wild Green Yonder is more like the first two films in that it is not funny enough to last 90 minutes and suffers from a total overdose of plot.

Now I'm not suggesting that the third film was brilliant, but just that it seemed to keep all the characters in the same plot thread and also helped itself immensely by being consistently funny so I was likely to be thinking about the problems it had (and it did). Wild Green Yonder does not do this. First and foremost is the problem that, while it has good laughs, there is not enough funny material to spread across 90 minutes. With Futurama the plots have always been a bit secondary and the episodes worked off quick-fire comedy and asides. 90 minutes means you have to have a plot and cannot easily rely on quick-fire comedy as easily unless you really get it right (a reason why I worry about the Arrested Development movie). This film doesn't have enough comedy in it to keep the viewer laughing to the point where it is the film's "all".

The writers have tried to do the plot in such a way to create lots of smaller situations though, seemingly in order to allow for lots of gags and jokes. The problem is that, without the laughter to cover this, it leaves the plot fragmented and really messy. As with the other films, the characters are split up across several different threads that kind-of all move in the same direction to the same place but just makes the film feel like a mess with no flow or motion. It is fun to see as many of the characters as we do but by ramming them all into the film it partially causes this – in my opinion Bender's Game is the only one that makes this business work simply because it kept the characters more or less together in the various sections of the film. Here they are fragmented and it doesn't work as well.

The look of the film is as good as the usual Futurama standard and I enjoyed the different things they did with the titles, credits etc. The voice work is also good and, when anyone in the main cast is given a good line or catchphrase they generally nail it with their delivery. The guest voices are more mixed with most good but some dialling it in. Overall Wild Green Yonder is a solid film that, like the others, will mostly please fans without being good enough to win over casual viewers. It is funny but not enough for the running time and the plot threads are messy, distracting and fragmenting. I still quite enjoyed it but it was only "OK" and not good enough to hide the problems even as I was watching it.

First of all, it's much better than the last one (since i hate all the fantasy crap, not to mention it was badly implemented), but it has issues... The problem is there just isn't enough material here for a full movie. There are a few good laughs, but nothing really worthwhile since everything is too spread out. The whole Leela-Fry love is present again and i really think it's overplayed. In every movie there was some emotional undertones concerning Fry and Leela. That in itself isn't a bad thing, but c'mon, make up your minds already, let them be together or not. The problem is that all these movies are light-years behind the episodes. Maybe it was a blessing that they only made 4 seasons, since almost all the episodes are really good. But now the material is getting old, and drawing it out into hour and a half movies doesn't help... The story is so-so and there are too many characters. It almost feels like they tried to fit everyone in, but most times it has no point. Sure its fun to see the Don-Bot or Lurr, but it has no place in the movie's story line. And the whole Men vs Women theme of the whole movie is funny at first but gets old at the end. Don't even understand what the message is...

It's not bad, but nowhere near great. They should stick to 30 min. long episodes. Those where the ones that made futurama popular.