Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder, the latest Futurama ‘feature-length’ adventure, the fourth, suffers from all such animated releases, in that sitting down for its 85 minute run is really little different from watching a few episodes of the regular show back-to-back. The film has some serious pacing issues that, in places, are genuinely sleep-inducing.
But there are a few bright spots with the extras on the disc, including a ‘Matt Groening and David Cohen in Space!’ featurette which, while quite self indulgent, is amusing, if only to hear the reactions of LA locals to the pair walking around LA afterwards in their space flight suits.
Also, presented by the joke production company ‘DVD bonus productions that no-one bothers to watch’, the ‘How we make Futurama so good’ is entertaining too, but mostly, assuming Fry’s crassness here a bit, due to the presenter of the piece, Lauren Tom being so cute throughout.
And to cap it off, the AV commentary is hardly compelling, despite even the mighty Matt Groening’s presence. So it’s not really the best of the extra content on the Blu-ray version of this film but the only one exclusive to the HD format. Promised the extras world when the Blu-ray format was launched, early adopters simply haven’t been sufficiently rewarded with the content they were told was coming. Perhaps that joke company name producing ‘How we make Futurama so good’ may not be that far from the truth, belying the makers’ conviction that it’s not worth providing many extras anyhow.
Guest stars include illusionist Penn Jillette, Snoop Dogg, and ‘Family Guy’ creator Seth MacFarlane.
Sound: 5.1 DTS HD Master Audio (lossless)
