Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Bob’s Burgers Movie’ on Hulu and HBO Max, a Typically Delightful Supersized Episode of the Lovable Animated Series

In a summer where Beavis and Butthead went to space and so many others traversed the multiverse, The Bob’s Burgers Movie – now on Hulu and HBO Max – is refreshingly small-scale. But in the context of the endlessly charming, long-running TV series that inspired it, the movie’s HUGE, with a more dynamic visual palette and murder-mystery plot pushing the ever-loving Belcher family farther outside the burger-diner than ever before. So this five-times-as-long-as-the-usual-episode movie version of Bob’s Burgers definitely hits the sweet spot for fans’ expectations.

THE BOB’S BURGERS MOVIE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: SIX YEARS AGO. WONDER WHARF. Only stuffed animals witness the violence, their mouths frozen agape, eyes empty. PRESENT DAY: Bob’s (voice of H. Jon Benjamin) poops have been loose lately, poor guy. He’s fretting intestinally because the restaurant loan payment is due in a week and they don’t have any money. Wait – you do know who Bob Belcher is, right? The owner and head chef at Bob’s Burgers, which he runs with his wife, Linda (John Roberts), while their three children, Tina (Dan Mintz), Gene (Eugene Mirman) and Louise (Kristen Schaal) fart around amusingly? They’re the cutest, funniest and probably fartiest fam on TV since 2011. They’re tight. Very supportive. Know each other well. Respectful to each other in a lovely and very eccentric way. Buncha lovable weirdos, the Belchers.

Anyway, they’re always pretty much broke, so Bob and Linda’s current dilemma isn’t at all atypical. Ditto for the kids, who get subplotted before the bigger plot pulls ’em away: Tina, as obsessed with boys’ butts as ever, wants lispy doof Jimmy Jr. (also Benjamin) to be her summer boyfriend. Louise has an existential crisis about her omnipresent bunny-ears hat after a cruel schoolmate calls her a baby, making us wonder if this movie might let us see her unhatted for the first time ever. And Gene just wants to siiiiinnnnnggggg; specifically, he’d love to see his band, the Itty Bitty Ditty Committee, play the Octa-Wharfiversary, a weeklong shebang celebrating eight decades of the Wonder Wharf, the neighborhood sub-Coney Island pier amusement park. The bank just told Bob and Linda they can’t have an extension for their loan payment, so they bear down to sell a lot of burgers during the celebration, and hopefully not lose the restaurant and end up living out in the alley with the raccoons.

Par for the Belcher course, this is the precise moment when a massive sinkhole opens up directly in front of the door to the restaurant. But a big juicy opportunity presents itself when Louise finds a corpse in the sinkhole – such is the irony of existence, ain’t it? – because, what with one thing and another, it may allow the kids to hopefully find the murderer and get on the good side of their implicated rich landlord Mr. Fischoeder (Kevin Kline), thus kicking the can of their financial struggles down the street. That’s the kids’ plan, at least, which they pursue without their parents knowing. Meanwhile, Bob and Linda get some help from their pal and regular burger eater Teddy (Larry Murphy), who’s a sweetheart, as ever, and builds them a burger cart so they can take their greasy-griddle show right over to the pier for the Wharfiversary. Does Teddy steal the show? (He always steals the show.) Will Bob and Linda lose the restaurant? (Season 13 of the series looms on the fall schedule, so probably not, unless this movie aims to dramatically disrupt the continuity of the Burgersverse.) Does Louise’s hat come off? (I can’t answer that – NO SPOILERS here thank you).

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The Simpsons Movie, Beavis and Butthead Do the Universe, The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, etc. But no animated-series-to-cinema adaptation is likely to surpass South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut for the most big laughs.

Performance Worth Watching Hearing: Larry Murphy is always and forever the Bob’s Burgers MVP. He makes Teddy – a fix-it guy and burger junkie who’s the oddest and strangest of odd strange birds, but in a wonderfully gentle way – one of the greatest supporting comic-relief characters on TV, in the Hall of Fame with Newman, Mrs. Ochmonek and Larry, his brother Darryl and his other brother Darryl.

Memorable Dialogue: Bob laments his gross lack of luck once the sinkhole becomes a “crime hole”:

Bob: I don’t think they fill in crime holes very quickly.

Gene: Crime hole.

Bob: Gene.

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: The joy of Bob’s Burgers, in episodic or cinematic form, is its tonal perfection and kind-spiritedness, its not-quite-dead deadpan, warmly eccentric characters and ability to churn amusingly inconsequential conflict out of its simple premise: Family of working-class restaurateurs barely gets by. The Bob’s Burgers Movie doesn’t really raise the stakes – besides hinging on an untimely death; godspeed, dear carnie Cotton Candy Dan – but broadens the scope a bit, de-flattening the Belchers’ surroundings with complex 3-D shots, dropping them into bigger set pieces (e.g., the Fischoeders’ secret clubhouse) and even throwing in a car chase. Which is, of course, one of the more ridiculous car chases you’ll ever see.

But that’s about as ambitious as it gets, which is just fine. We don’t need the Belchers to venture too far outside their small, idiosyncratic world, nor do they need to risk their lives to save it. Not to reveal too much, but there’s a scene where they’re trapped in a tight, dark spot and all hope seems to be lost, and the tiny treasure of the moment is when Linda, clad in a bikini stretched over a poofy hamburger-mascot costume, just wants to hold her kids’ hands. Such is the emotional generosity of the series, the foundation beneath its endearingly kooky comedy.

The film stays true to the TV formula, bringing in familiar recurring characters for cameos and deploying its signature loony musical bits. The latter are expanded, and key components of the plot, with a catchy early number, “Sunny Side Up Summer,” establishing individual character conflicts, a middle one quite entertainingly set in a travel-trailer commune dubbed Carnieapolis, and a late one functioning as the narrative of the talking killer, whose spiel is drawn out to ludicrous lengths. But that’s as satirical as the movie gets, which is also just fine. Bob’s Burgers never strives to be topical or edgy – we have The Simpsons for that, still – preferring to keep its universe microcosmic, whether on TV or at the cinema.

Our Call: STREAM IT. I’ve gone this entire review without making a single food analogy for The Bob’s Burgers Movie. That was deliberate. And that’s how much respect I have for this wonderful franchise. Let this movie open your eyes to the tiny Bob’s Burgers world, or further enrich your appreciation for it.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.

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