Director: Bernard Derriman, Loren Bouchard
Cast: H. Jon Benjamin, Dan Mintz, Eugene Mirman, Larry Murphy
Have I Seen it Before: No. Sadly, with an imminent dropping to streaming it wasn’t a priority to start breathing in other people’s air. Probably doomed the box office pretty quick, but once it did drop I was there.
Did I Like It: The show is unassailably the best animated comedy currently on the air, nimbly swinging between heartfelt and edge, and often managing to be both in the same moment.
It is regularly the most musically versatile show on television… well, ever, now that I think about it. Live action doesn’t even come close.
Gene (Mirman) and Louise (Kristen Schaal) often remind me of my sister and I as we were growing up, if the Belchers weren’t so much running a burger joint and instead straddling that fine line between oil and gas litigation and dulcimer music.
I love the show.
And the movie is a very fine episode of the show stretched out to two hours. The murder plot keeps things moving along through the runtime, and the sinkhole adds a certain more epic scope to the proceedings, but it’s not an elevation of the material. Maybe that’s because the material is so good to begin with. We may not have needed a film, unlike what happened with The Simpsons Movie (2007), where it came along when the best thing in the preceding ten years to happen to the family from Springfield in ten years was a video game riffing on Grand Theft Auto*.
But when it comes to recommending this film, I’m not sure I can land in the effusively positive column. If you enjoy the show, you’ll enjoy the show. It delivers the goods. If you’ve never seen the show, I have a hard time imagining that this would bring you into the Wonder Wharf fold. For that, you just need to take the show in as a whole, and by the time you reach the end of season 12, you’ll be ready for the movie like the rest of us.