FUTURAMA: THE BEAST WITH A BILLION BACKS (DVD Review) - 6/7/08

With the second of the four Futurama films just released we can expect "Bender's Game" in November 2008 following with "The Wild Green Yonder" in April 2009. So what do we get with the Region 2 (UK) version of "Futurama: The Beast With A Billion Backs"? Well we seem to have lost some of the Special Features from the US advance listing and what we do get is pretty poor, the cover is a homage including the title; of a typical fifties B-Movie schlock horror with it's own Futurama twist to it and a rather woefully underwhelming feature story to boot! Although a lot of people moaned about "Bender's Big Score" I was happy to see Futurama back and enjoyed it. This time around I found a handful of laugh out loud gags but felt disappointed in the overall scheme of things. But this isn't a criticism - I'd rather watch a duff episode of Futurama than none at all and still found much enjoyment in all the little touches (That if you blink you will miss them) in the background and listen carefully to the soundtrack as well; as there are a number of musical jokes as well. On further viewing I'm certain that my frame of mind will change and that I'll grow to like this version of Futurama as much as any other. On the Special Features side you get an extra 3-D Futurama episode (Sort Of?) with Storyboard Animatics and Deleted Scenes. A David Cross Featurette and Bloopers. With 3-D Models and A Brief History Of Deathball Featurette plus a sneak peak at "Bender's Game" which seems to be a piss-take of Lord Of The Rings.