Futurama: Beast With A Billion Backs!

I have bad news everybody! Futurama: Beast with a Billion Backs is Matt Groenig's 2nd of 4 full-length movies with the cast from Planet Express.

In the newest movie, a crack in the universe appears resulting from Bender's overuse of time travel and the gang must figure out what to do with it. At a scientific symposium, most scientists conclude ultimate defeat, but Professor Farnsworth (Billy West), the distant relative of Fry (Billy West), says that it's the obligation of the scientific community to learn as much as possible about this anomaly and try to solve it. Guess host Professor Stephen Hawking (Stephen Hawking) agrees.

Planet Express is sent to explore the crack, only to have a visiting monster with millions of neck-penetrating tentacles come flying out of the crack. The problem is that the monster makes everyone feel good. "We love the tentacle" they say, sort of an allusion to 1984, the book by George Orwell. To make matters worse, Fry becomes the Pope of the New Order of the Tentacle. Meanwhile, Bender (John DiMaggio) no longer feels loved by the humans and joins the League of Robots, which is governed by the Robots Rules of Order. The highly sexual Zapp Branigan (Billy West) is then sent to destroy the monster, only to accidentally kill Kif (Maurice LaMarche), Amy's (Lauren Tom) new husband.

As Yivo (David Cross) the love monster slowly takes over the universe, Leela (Katey Sagal) is the only one left without a tentacle in her neck. She is finally able to find a weakness to the monster and save the world.

The movie parodies many popular movies including Pirates of the Caribbean and Steamboat Willie. The movie is full of hysterical gags that only the most educated eye will catch. Having knowledge of the highly popular TV series helps with the understanding of the movie as there is no character development.

The movie is unrated since it went straight to DVD (usually a death knell for a movie, but this is certainly an exception), but I would image that it would be Rated PG-13 as it contains some sexual situations (Zapp Branigan) and some animated violence. It is 90 minutes long, but it goes by quickly. I give the movie 4 stars and highly recommend that you watch the 4 Seasons of Futurama first.