Last night I got around to watching the second straight-to-video Futurama movie, coming after the first Bender’s Big Score.

I thought Bender’s Big Score was WAY overdone. It was as if every writer had all these pent-up ideas for the show when it was canceled and they attempted to get them all in to this first movie. As much of a Futurama fan as I am, even I started looking at the clock in the hopes it would end.

Thankfully, The Beast With a Billion Backs was much better-made and better-written. It “felt” more like an extended episode of Futurama. The movie begins with, what else, a big tear in the Universe. However, it just sits there and does nothing. Meanwhile, Amy and Kiff are planning their wedding and Fry is dating a new girl (voiced by Brittany Murphy). Over the course of the movie various characters explore love (that makes it sound sappy but think of our characters and you’ll realize how badly they’ll find to screw it up) and find out what they big honking crack in the sky is.

The writers got back to putting in more jokes that always fit – Bender’s drinking, Fry’s stupidity, the Professor’s forgetfulness, Zoidberg’s uselessness and making more of the jokes about things in the future being bigger versions of things that already sucked today. There are also plenty of the usual sight gags and background funnies that you really have to be paying attention to see.

In addition to Brittany Murphy, David Cross does a celebrity voice in the film.

Overall, it’s much better than the first film and although I felt it a tad too long I found that there were at least a couple of moments that I had to rewind and watch a few more times before continuing.