Futurama is a sci-fi, comedy series about a pizza delivery guy who, after being cyrogenically frozen in the year 2000, awakens a thousands years later.  His adventures in the future ran on Fox from 1999 to 2003.  Created by Matt Groening, the creator of the Simpsons, Futurama found a second life of sorts in reruns on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim for several years.  The successful run spawned the announcement of new Futurama content.  A series of four DVDs will bring back Philip J. Fry, Leela, Bender and the rest of the cast.  The third DVD, Futurama: Bender’s Game, was recently released.

Leela, the one-eyed Captain the cast’s Planet Express delivery ship, spends much of the “film” dealing with her anger issues.  When the Professor discovers that the delivery ship has been damaged after Leela entered it into a demolition derby, he fits her with an anger-suppression collar.  While Leela attempts to restrain herself, Bender, the ill-tempered, hard drinking robot, discovers his “imagination” when playing a game of Dungeons and Dragons.  Soon he can no longer tell reality from fantasy and is admitted into a robot insane asylum.  All this is set against the backdrop of a dark-matter energy shortage created by series antagonist Mom.  When Fry, Leela and the Professor confront Mom at her dark-matter mine, Bender’s out of control imagination plunges the cast into a fantasy world.  Cue the Lord of the Rings spoof in which we see the “Die of Power’s” hold over Fry similar to the One Ring’s power over Gollum.

Bender’s Game is a lot of fun.  There is no shortage of the familiar Futurama humor and witty commentary.  I like the change up from the usual Star Trek spoofs.  Anyone who played D&D or likes the Lord of the Rings movies should enjoy this film.  Also entertaining was more backstory about Nibbler (poor Nibblians) and the Professor/Mom relationship is always funny.  I enjoyed this film more than the previous one, The Beasts with a Billion Backs, which I thought was average at best.  I will review that DVD along with the first film, Bender’s Big Score, and the upcoming Into the Wild Green Yonder in the weeks to come.

Studio: 20th Century Fox
Release: 2008
Rating: Unrated
Length: 88 minutes
Genre: comedy sci-fi
Official Site: The Official Futurama Site