The Bob's Burgers Movie

Even if it's never quite found the same level of success as other TV prime time cartoons like The Simpsons or Family Guy, Bob's Burgers has been consistent in its quality of low key humor and heart.  These traits are in full display in The Bob's Burgers Movie, which will no doubt please fans, but I also suspect this is a case of something that works beautifully in a half hour time slot that feels stretched thin and padded at over 100 minutes. 

This is a movie that has its charms, but I was also ready for it to be done long before it was.  This is especially true of its climax, which feels like three different climaxes stitched together, and each one dragged to maddening length.  What's quirky, charming and bright on TV just felt endless to me here, and dressed up with fancier animation than the show.  The movie also seems to want to be a musical, kicking off with a rousing number that introduces the individual characters and their wants for the next 100 minutes.  Then it chickens out, and seems to drop the notion.  Then, it starts in again with another number a good 40 minutes or so after the last one.  Either commit to the idea or not.  This is a movie that was easy for me to admire in a lot of ways, but hard to truly enjoy.

To be fair, the characters from the show are as likable as ever.  Set in and around the family-owned titular restaurant, we are introduced to patriarch Bob (voiced winningly as always by H. Jon Benjamin), his optimistic wife Linda (John Roberts), and their three kids, which include the boy-obsessed Tina (Dan Mintz), the constantly-excited Gene (Eugene Mirman) who enjoys making instruments out of things around the restaurant, and youngest daughter Louise (Kristen Schaal) who is going through a personal crisis when she thinks others don't view her as being mature because of the bunny ear hat she's always wearing.  As on the show, these characters and the voice actors play off each other beautifully, and directors Loren Bouchard (the series creator) and Bernard Derriman know how to use them to their best from time to time.

The problem I had is that 20 minutes or so of these characters is a lot different from a feature film, and I was never as engaged as I often am when I catch an episode.  The plot concerns a sinkhole suddenly forming in front of the restaurant, bringing business to a halt just as the family is struggling to pay off their loan on the building.  Some human remains are discovered within the hole, leading to the kids going off to solve the mystery behind a murder from long ago that's been forgotten all this time.  All of this is done with the usual laid-back style that I understand is the trademark of the show, but it simply did not engage me.  Upping the animation beyond the usual TV budget just wasn't enough to hold my attention, and the jokes did not land as often as I would have liked.

The Bob's Burgers Movie stretches for time, going deeper into the history of the landlord of the restaurant, Mr. Fischoeder (Kevin Kline) and his bizarre family, which might delight fans, but I found it distracting and didn't work as well as the stuff involving Bob and his clan.  It doesn't take long for the movie to start to resemble a really dragged out episode, and not a particularly memorable one in my eyes.  Maybe this is what you want, and maybe you will enjoy this more than I.  As a critic, I can only report on whether a film worked on me or didn't.  This is a movie that delighted me from time to time, then it slowly started to lose its spell, and then the movie seemed to be wrapping itself up, but it still went on going and going for seemingly another hour until I had kind of checked out.

There's stuff that works, but not enough for me to recommend except to the most devoted of the show's followers.  They might just be thrilled seeing these characters and the show's trademark humor up on the big screen.  More power to them.  I ended up feeling detached, and that's not something I'm proud about, because I like these characters. 

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