Another direct-to-DVD from the Futurama team, Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs is a movie with funny dialogue, odd situations, and lots and lots of tentacles. Most of the Futurama television episodes try to provide two things: a plot that in some way contributes to the show, either through laughs or actual dramatic effect, and a lot of funny, often ironic, lines. If all goes well, you get something really hilarious all the way around. If something doesn't quite work, such as the plot, at least you have a backup layer, such as the script. It's a safe strategy and a good one, and in the case of this movie, the failsafe does have to kick in now and then. The plot progresses slowly, though it does have its redeeming points, but the script often saves the day.

Futurama takes place in the thirty-first century. In this movie, a huge rip in space has appeared over Earth, and no one knows what has caused it or what will happen because of it. After a period of subplots that comprise just about exactly the first half of the movie, we learn that on the other side of the rift is a many-tentacled sentient body named Yivo. Soon, Yivo is sending his tentacles through the rift and all over earth, attaching them to the backs of Earthlings' necks and controlling their minds, forcing them to love him. President Richard Nixon's head (reanimated and preserved in a glass jar) explains: "King Kong's too old to save us this time." That's a pretty good example of the kind of humor the series banks on.

Eventually the Yivo-loving becomes religious. Though no worshipping ever occurs, every one of his mind-controlled subjects loves him devoutly. Fry, the series' main character, becomes the pope of Yivo and explains, "Thus saith the Tentacle: 'Verily thou shalt rejoice in the House of the Tentacle.' [. . .] It loves me, and I love it.'" As it turns out, Yivo has been around far longer than even our universe. When it saw the big bang, it began to love us, and it has waited a billion years to contact us in hopes of creating a relationship. The situation not quite as cultish or creepy as it sounds. Though the plot and Yivo itself may sound very Cthulu-esque (and were no doubt influenced by the Lovecraft story), the events play out casually and with humor, especially when Yivo lightens up a little on the theatrics and woos the Earthlings in a less pushy way, taking the entire population on dates. In fact, this is the inverse of "The Call ofCthulu," where the tentacled beast is horrific. This one's actually pretty friendly ... too friendly, perhaps, but friendly nonetheless.

The movie takes quite a long time to get to this point, though. Luckily, where the plot lags, the dialogue is there to keep the viewer laughing. Futurama script humor is often best when it's either being ironic or taking casual comments to the extreme. A prime example of the irony is when Leela (a supporting character), trying to help everyone escape from the tentacles when they first invade, yells, "Nobody panic! Just get to the panic room!" Two good examples of the dialogue making a generic comment into something more, are Zapp Brannigan, an chauvinistic space captian, saying to Yivo, after becoming disappointed with Yivo's relationship with the people of Earth, "We loved you, and you turn around and treat us like some woman!?" and Fry, expressing the same discontent, sadly reflecting, "I don't know if I can put my heart on the line again only to have it broken and stomped on like a nerd's face." Then there are the lines that almost seem to jump from nowhere: "The Tentacle is made of electro-matter: matter's badass grandma!" One is never far from one of these lines. They make up for any lack of pace.

The tentacle plot, once we really get to it, though lacking a bit, does offer some pretty amusing thoughts. It is important first to note that the plot, though it may seem so, is not really a commentary on religion but on the things we mistake for religion, or place above of religion. We know this because when the population of Earth goes to live in eternal harmony with Yivo, a skeptical Leela states, "This isn't Heaven. It just looks exactly like it and makes us immortal, which I find suspicious." In other words, the movie is not saying, "Heaven (or religion) is a hoax." Instead, the message is more like, "Heaven might not be exactly what we expect." Sounds reasonable to me. It turns out that Heaven as humankind has generally depicted it, with people walking on clouds and angels flying around, is not actually what Heaven looks like. It is what Yivo's world looks like, so he planted the Heaven-correlation in our brains so that we would love him. In this way, The Beast with a Billion Backs does just what The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy does; it presents a cosmos completely flipped and twisted from what we imagine.

Aside from Leela, basically everyone is blinded by their pleasure to be skeptical of the authenticity of the "heaven" they are in. Though they are at first mind-controlled, they eventually break free, only to give in willingly and complacently to the smooth talk of Yivo. Sure, this is an out-there concept, but that's what science fiction does: it asks us to consider wild possibilities on the cosmic scale so that we can better understand the world -- or understand that we may not understand all that we think we do.

This concept of devoting yourself to a pleasure that blinds you to the world's truths is the major theme of the film, and it is somewhat heightened by its subject matter of invading tentacles. Tentacles, which are a common element in some Asian erotica (search it on a news website if you really want to learn more), become symbolic of not only sexual pleasure but any kind of pleasure that one places above all else. The film's title, The Beast with a Billion Backs, also emphasizes this idea, as it is a play off a sixteenth-century slang term for sexual intercourse, "the beast with two backs," which can be found in François Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel. The invasion of the tentacles represents temptation and our submission to it (thankfully, the film uses its tentacles in only G-rated ways). It is an impressive theme for a film spun off a TV series based on jokes about the future.

The Beast with a Billion Backs is definitely a film worth seeing, especially if you're a Futurama fan or a fan of sci-fi humor. The plot feels somewhat like an afterthought, especially considering how it doesn't really come into play until the half-way point, and when it does begin progressing there are still a number of slow points, but the humor is present at all times. It may not be a very well paced sci-fi/comedy, but it is a good one.