At the beginning of last month, I saw the first six minutes of The Bob’s Burgers Movie in a big room full of mega-fans of the twelve-seasons-and-counting cult-favorite animated sitcom Bob’s Burgers at the Anaheim Convention Center during WonderCon 2022, and the footage naturally brought down the house. More recently, I watched the full film at a sparsely attended press screening in Burbank, and it made me wish they had just shown the whole thing to that other audience.
There were chuckles and guffaws here and there throughout my screening, of course, but I can only imagine the response if the theater had been filled to the brim with die-hard Bob’s fans, so I hope that’s what moviegoers get to experience when the film opens this Friday.
Over nearly 250 episodes, the Belcher family has entertained viewers on FOX during the network’s Sunday-evening animation block, but with The Bob’s Burgers Movie, creator and co-director Loren Bouchard has expanded the scope and the feel of the cozy seaside town in which the titular restaurant operates. Like The Simpsons Movie before it, this big-screen continuation of the series improves upon the familiar animation style and widens the aspect ratio from 16:9 to 2.39:1, making the narrative feel that much more epic. The movie opens with a flashback to “Six Years Earlier” (not six years in our real-time, but six years in the world of the show) as two figures in silhouette struggle against each other in the Wonder Wharf amusement park down the street from the Belchers’ burger joint until a gun goes off and the nearby stuffed animal carnival prizes stare in lifeless disbelief at what has transpired before them.
Cut to the “present,” where Bob (voiced, as always, by H. Jon Benjamin) and Linda (John Roberts) Belcher are late with a loan payment and the local bank is threatening to repossess their beloved kitchen equipment. They have a week to make up the deficit, and thankfully that week is during Wonder Wharf’s bustling 80th anniversary celebration, but when the ground quite literally falls out from underneath them, the family has to come up with a plan to save their restaurant– and quick. The three Belcher children– teenage Tina (Dan Mintz), eleven-year-old Gene (Eugene Mirman), and nine-year-old Louise (Kristen Schaal) each have their own story arcs that are set up by series-callback fantasy sequences and play out through the rest of the film, but they also become determined to help their parents preserve the business that keeps them afloat financially.
The newly collapsed sinkhole in front of the entrance to Bob’s Burgers becomes a key factor in more ways than one, and the family eventually find themselves embroiled in a murder-mystery plot involving their wealthy landlord Calvin Fischoeder (Kevin Kline), his ne’er-do-well brother Felix (Zach Galifianakis) and their put-upon cousin Courtney (David Wain). Sadly most members of the wide cast of supporting characters from the show either play very tiny roles or don’t appear at all: there’s a dance sequence over the end credits that gets through some of the much-missed personas such as Linda’s sister Gayle– I guess there’s only so much room in a feature, but I would have liked to see these folks put to more prominent use. There’s also an odd scene where Bill Hader’s recurring character Mickey pops up only to be voiced by someone else (was Hader not available?) and Jimmy Pesto– the competing restaurant owner across the street– goes uncharacteristically silent about Bob’s predicament due to (I’m assuming) the recent fallout involving actor Jay Johnston.
But all that aside, I’m pleased to report that The Bob’s Burgers Movie absolutely retains the spirit and humor of the sitcom, right down to Gene’s frequent double-entendres and Teddy’s (Larry Murphy) desperate need for Bob and Linda’s approval. The story also feels appropriately scaled for a Cinemascope-sized adventure, and I loved some of the memorably eerie reveals involving Wonder Wharf’s history that are discovered by the Belchers as the mystery continues to unfold. One other minor nitpick I have about the film is that I could have done without the musical numbers, of which there are three or four (the songs are often my least favorite part of the series, and that holds true here). I find that Bob’s Burgers tends to work best when it feels just a tiny bit more grounded, and the musical elements take me right out of that world. Plus the songs just aren’t all that catchy, especially for a major motion picture.
Regardless, I think fans of the show are without a doubt going to find a lot to love about the movie. There are countless references to events and character relationships from throughout the run of the series, and the whole thing plays like one big love letter to the Belchers and their little fictional universe… as wonderfully, beautifully, awkwardly expressed as Tina pledging her undying devotion to Jimmy Junior.
My grade: 4 out of 5 Kuchi Kopis.
The Bob’s Burgers Movie opens this Friday, May 27th.