By Tom Wiles, Third Year, Theatre & Film
The sentence you are about to read contains a pun. Are you ready? Just go with it. Well, as far as jokes about steak go, they are usually a rare medium well done. Get it? Do you get it? Reader, I have genuinely spent the last 20 minutes googling food puns, and as you can see, finishing my last university deadline has taken its toll on my psyche. I simply could not think of anything humorous to say about burgers or food in general to start this review, and I would rather die than include the word ‘relishing’.
This makes me all the more impressed with Loren Bouchard, creator of the Bob’s Burgers (2011-) tv show and the subsequent movie released not long ago, packed to the brim with food (and flatulent) based gags - running for over a decade as of writing. The show takes place in a seaside town, focusing on the lives of the Belcher family and their burger restaurant, consisting of Bob (of burger fame), his musically-inclined wife Linda, and their three unorthodox children Tina, Gene, and Louise.
The stylisation of Bob's Burgers earned the show an immediately following - a quick-paced musical animated sitcom about a family working in a burger restaurant, boasting a variety of loveable characters voiced by now-iconic voice acting royalty such as H. Jon Benjamin, Kristen Schaal, and Dan Mintz. If you have somehow gotten this far into the review and haven’t watched Bob's Burgers, firstly, shame on you and secondly, it’s no wonder that with all of the ingredients in their successful show, that a movie would follow suit.
Briefly, before I review the film itself, which is essentially just an extra-long episode of Bob's Burgers, I want to mention the audience in attendance. Not only were they one of the best crowds I had ever seen – never have I seen a group of people so into a film – but incidentally, there were at least five times as many people attending the opening night of The Bob’s Burgers Movie (2022) than had been a part of for the opening night of Everything, Everywhere, All At Once (2022), that I saw the week before. This leads me to assume that the average Bristol film-goer prefers fart-and-food humour above multiverse masterpieces; another reason I adore this stupid little city.
As mentioned above, all this film is, in essence, is a long episode of Bob’s Burgers, centring around the family struggling to pay back a loan on their restaurant after a sinkhole opening destroys their business. This then coincides with a historical murder-mystery plot that ‘The Burger People’, as they are informally known as, wind up in the middle of.
As short a description as this is, the runtime is padded with a plethora of comedy and musical interludes. To be overt, this is all I ever wanted The Bobs Burgers Movie to be – as a fan – it exceeded my expectations and left me in stitches time and time again.
However, let’s get down to the big question folks – is The Bob’s Burgers Movie a good movie? I think it’s easy to be divided into whether Bob's Burgers translates to the big screen well and even I, your handsome reviewer, admit to being a little divided at first. It is just a long episode of the show fans already know and love.
If possible, think back to just how iconic The Simpsons Movie (2007) was when that was released – respectfully, The Bob’s Burgers Movie isn’t The Simpsons Movie. And you know what? I don’t think it needs to be, nor do I think the creators want it to be – this is a love letter to the people who have enjoyed ridiculous burger puns for ten-plus years, and that’s everything I could ask for.
Featured Image: IMDB
What did you think of this TV adaptation?
