There are times in one’s life when a person thinks I should see that movie that’s out now, the one about the Issues, the one that’s very serious. That urge ought to be resisted at all costs. No matter the Issue, no matter how Serious, Futurama has already produced an episode tackling that selfsame topic. The work has been done for you. You need never leave the house again.
Instead of: Her
You should watch: I Dated A Robot
I didn’t see Her. I’ve already seen a man fall in love with a robot voiced by a movie star, and it was Lucy Liu, and she died of a MASSIVE CORN CLOG IN PORT SEVEN. I Dated A Robot gets through pretty much all of Her‘s themes in a tight twenty-three minutes and it even manages to include one of the best fake PSAs of the last twenty years. Look at Joaquin Phoenix up there. Do you want anything good to happen to him? No. You want to punch him in his insipid, smiling face.
Instead of: The Bicycle Thief
You should watch: Three Hundred Big Boys
All the theft and redemption, but with the addition of precious ambergris and that great time-stop sequence where Fry rescues everybody in slow motion. I’m not going to apologize for not wanting to watch some guy not get his bicycle back in Italian for like two hours. Okay? I’m not. I can watch dads lose their jobs in real life, there’s still a recession on.
Instead of: Atonement
You should watch: The Late Philip J. Fry
The cruel, ineffable passage of time. Loss. Misunderstandings leading to sundered lovers. But The Late Philip J. Fry also has super-intelligent space-babes and it’s over in less than half an hour, which makes it demonstrably better than Atonement, which I have never seen.
Instead of: Requiem For A Dream
You should watch: The Problem With Popplers
Remember the sick lion that the hippies taught to eat vegan food in this episode? Imagine watching that sad-ass lion get electroshock therapy, and also its arm cut off, and also forced to perform degrading sex acts for drugs, for two hours. That’s Requiem For A Dream, so don’t watch it. You already know that heroin is bad for you. You don’t need an orchestra and also Ellen Burstyn scream-crying at you to remind you. Watch Zapp Brannigan try to dress an orangutan up as Leela instead. Plus, everyone on Earth gets sort of temporarily addicted to Popplers in the second act, so it’s…you know, thematically, there’s a bridge. Maybe the Slurm episode would have worked better here. I don’t know.
Instead of: Inception
You should watch: The Sting
No, I didn’t see Inception either. I saw Shutter Island, and the thought of watching Leonardo DiCaprio’s square-ass head trying to squint his way through another mystery was too much for my human heart to bear. But this episode is pretty similar, from what I’ve been able to gather about Inception‘s plot based on mostly that one GIF where it looks like Cillian Murphy is blowing into Leonardo DiCaprio’s eyes. The Sting has hopeless missions and missing crews and layers of consciousness and alternate realities too, but it also has space bees, putting it soundly ahead.
Instead of: Apocalypse Now
You should watch: Fry and the Slurm Factory
The more obvious choice would be Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, or maybe Soylent Green, but you can not-watch both of those movies as long as you’re also not-watching Apocalypse Now.
Instead of: The Sopranos
You should watch: Bender Gets Made
Of course I never saw The Sopranos. A bald man goes to therapy and kills people for like eight seasons, right? Ohhh my God, it looked SO BORING. Let me guess, there was an episode where everyone let all their repressed feelings out at a funeral, his daughter does something disappointing, he has at least one son who turns out to be gay, and there’s a funny lighthearted scene right before a big serious murder scene at least once a season. Why would I watch that when I could see Clamps? “THE CLAMPS.”
Instead of: The West Wing
You should watch: A Head In The Polls
Guys, I’ve tried to watch The West Wing, I swear to God. Everyone I know mostly hates Aaron Sorkin but still has a soft spot for this show. And I love Rob Lowe and I’ve seen The American President like ninety times. It should be there. But I just can’t make it past the pilot. I’d rather watch Richard Nixon growl “look at my shiny new body,” then stomp all over the Capitol. I’m a simple woman, with simple needs.
Instead of: Any Wes Anderson movie ever
You should watch: Mars University
No one should ever watch a Wes Anderson movie. As a nation, we should quietly agree to pretend he does not exist until he transfers schools. Wes Anderson thinks he’s Gunter the super-intelligent monkey with his bowler hat on, but he’s actually Fatbot from Robot House, falling off the ladder during the robot panty raid.
Instead of: The Abyss/Gone With The Wind/Moby Dick
You should watch: The Deep South
It covers all the same bases as every one of those films, while also giving us “Dr. Zoidberg, homeowner” and finally addressing the human-mermaid sex question.
In conclusion, watch more television. Thank you for your time.
Tags: better things, futurama, massive corn clog in port seven, serious things, some of these are not movies, television, the royal tenenbaums is absolutely the shittiest movie i have ever seen, watch this not that
Mallory, thank you for posting this, especially today.
Also: Instead of watching “Old Yeller”, “Marley and Me”, any pet film intended to make you sob: watch “Jurassic Bark”. Do any of those movies have a dog that can bark-sing “Walking On Sunshine”? They do not.
I nervously scrolled through the whole post first to see if Jurassic Bark was included, eyes slightly averted from the screen just in case; now I can actually read the whole thing freely since she didn’t mention that [sniff] he [hiccup] waited [gasp] all [sob] that [sputter] time [wheeze]
YOU STOP THAT RIGHT NOW
aw man, now I’m starting to tear up
Yup, all it takes is hearing the title.
Yeah, that’s the only one I don’t rewatch. Turns out there’s never a good time for me to cry great big slobbering tears to the point of dehydration / becoming a desiccated husk void of all emotion because that dog took them all.
I only rewatch “Luck of the Fryrish” when I’m feeling especially masochistic. Yancy handing the lucky five-leaf clover over to his son wrecks me every time.
The mere words “Jurassic Bark” and I am crying at my desk. Curse you magnificent humans.
Seconded.
Ahaha I literally started to tear up at my desk just at the mention of the name. CONGRATS.
Is that the only thing ever to be retconned because it was JUST TOO SAD.
NIXONNNNN’S BAAAAAAACK
I made a special attempt to locate proper WiFi just to log in and say bless you, Mallory, this is the balm this day required. Also your assessment here is 469% correct.
really appreciate the ad here is for SQUIDS saying “they’ll jet-propel their way into your heart”
you can watch Insane in the Mainframe instead of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest too!! Not a speck of Jack Nicholson in the whole thing. I don’t know if I like Roberto and his stabbing knife better than I like Clamps and his clamps, I think I might.
I think about something from Futurama at least once a day.
I’ve had “Robot Hell” stuck in my head for three days at press time and I am Not. Sorry.
Cigars are evil, you won’t miss ’em
We’ll find ways to simulate that smell…
I still have great affection for the West Wing. Primarily for CJ, but also because it made my dad real aggravated because once a week for an hour no one in the house was paying attention to him. I know the show’s real mansplainy, but it was a tool of misandry in my house, so…
It was big in my house because “It was the one hour a week I could pretend I didn’t live in Bush’s America,” says my mom.
I like your mom.
“Leonardo DiCaprio’s square-ass head”
Nailed it. We all need some laughs today.
“Good news! It’s a suppository.”
I stopped watching the newer ones so that I could remember those first four seasons as the absolute pinnacle of television, but now I’m hoping that someone will tell me they picked up again and this is in fact a horrible mistake. Please?
Also, instead of 12 Monkeys, watch Roswell That Ends Well. (Except maybe watch 12 Monkeys anyway, because Terry Gilliam.)
The last season is good and worth watching! If nothing else, watch it for the finale episode. It’s perfect.
Could this please be extended into a fully comprehensive list of Futurama episodes to watch instead of every movie ever? Because I am kind of tired of movies. Futurama? Not so tired.
1. All of them.
mmm, not the Apple parody
Or the Prop 8 one, really.
Amended: Watch most of them.
I can’t make it through the first five minutes of the one where they are, like, Scooby Doo or something.
After this and Class v. The Graduate the other day, I am 100% on board with all of Mallory’s ‘watch this instead of that’ suggestions.
Be It Resolved: War is the H-Word over MASH, Full Metal Jacket, Born on the Fourth of July
Also Starship Troopers.
War were declared.
TIL I am criminally behind on my Futurama-watching.
The greatest of all shows.
No, I didn’t see Inception either. I saw Shutter Island, and the thought of watching Leonardo DiCaprio’s square-ass head trying to squint his way through another mystery was too much for my human heart to bear.
your logic is sound. make all my medical decisions for me.
Or possibly watch The Prisoner of Benda instead of anything else ever on the planet.
How you feel about The West Wing is how I feel about Justified, although I probably won’t like The West Wing either.
1) “Future Stock” instead of
2) Wall Street, the Wolf of Wall Street, Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps, any movie about Wall Street.
“Fry, I’m an eighties guy. For me, friendship means I’ll hit you with a pool cue until your retina detaches.”
!!!!
I have just learned from the internet that Eighties Guy’s actual name is STEVE CASTLE.
“My only regret is… that I have boneitis.”
Sharks don’t have necks.
Alternate option for Requiem For A Dream: Hell is Other Robots
“Her” is TERRIBLE. >:( Could’ve done a *ton* of interesting things exploring the insidious role of technology in our lives, but nooooooope just a middle aged white dude having an snoozefest of an identity crisis. I can’t remember the last time I rolled my eyes so much at a movie, but apparently this was an unpopular opinion when it came out.
unpopular opinion? not with me!
Come sit by me. *pats chair*
So this is a day late but I just need to put it out into the universe that YES UGH THAT MOVIE SUCKED SO HARD
Like it was clearly designed to appeal to all my dude friends who read too much Jonathan Franzen and are therefore conditioned to believe that their boring problems with their boring girlfriends are matters of Universal Literary Importance
What does it say about your imagination if someone gives you the concept of “cell phones develop autonomous artificial intelligence” and your only thought is “this will be a fun twist for my screenplay about middle-aged yuppies having affairs”
Now I’ll be repeating the word CLAMP all day. Thank you.
YES! My people.
Futurama is the best, watch it all.
also
“I’ll never forget you, Fry–MEMORY ERASED.”
“Oh, Fry, I love the way that you NOTICE TWO THINGS”
I love you more than the moon, and the stars, and POETIC IMAGE NUMBER 37 NOT FOUND
MASSIVE CORN CLOG IN PORT 7
Sharks don't have necks.
Is it important to watch Futurama in order, or could I just start with these episodes?
You can probably watch all of these episodes out of order–the pilot is the big setup for the show, but the setup is “Twentieth-century delivery boy gets thrown into the year 3000; his life immediately gets better,” so now you’re equipped. But really, you should watch each and every episode, so it’s a bit of a moot point.
I can't make it through the first five minutes of the one where they are, like, Scooby Doo or something.
I’m bookmarking this for every future discussion I ever have with a lady about whether or not I have seen a Wes Anderson movie.
So this is a day late but I just need to put it out into the universe that YES UGH THAT MOVIE SUCKED SO HARD
Like it was clearly designed to appeal to all my dude friends who read too much Jonathan Franzen and are therefore conditioned to believe that their boring problems with their boring girlfriends are matters of Universal Literary Importance
What does it say about your imagination if someone gives you the concept of "cell phones develop autonomous artificial intelligence" and your only thought is "this will be a fun twist for my screenplay about middle-aged yuppies having affairs"
No. I refuse to acknowledge your hatred for Wes Anderson, Mallory. You are entitled to your opinion, but you are wrong.
No. I refuse to acknowledge your hatred for Wes Anderson, Mallory. You are entitled to your opinion, but you are wrong.
Readers: Mallory, honey, we love you.
Mallory: Shut up baby, I know it.
Wes Anderson hatred? Something I hoped never to see on this site.
Can you please add Fun on a Bun for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind? They are eerily similar, but one is way better as it is Futurama.