Bob’s Burgers: The Movie

Loren Bouchard, Bernard Derriman and Nora Smith bring the successful animated TV series to the big screen. Bob (H. Jon Benjamin) and Linda (John Belcher) are struggling to make their business loan which is made worse when the bank won’t extend it and gives them a week to find the money. Selling lots of burgers is the answer, however that’s made tricky when a sink hole opens up in front of the restaurant. If that’s not enough a skeleton is found at the bottom of the hole, which turns out to be the remains of a “Carnie” from the fun park. With a sink hole to fill, and a murder to solve and save the restaurant all in a week, things don’t look great. But all is not lost when the three Belcher kids Louise, Tina and Gene (Kristen Schaal, Dan Mintz and Eugene Norman) set off on a Scooby-doo like adventure to solve the murder and save the restaurant.

The trick with any type of cartoon series transition to the big screen is to ensure you can stretch a 20 minute show into a 100 minute movie, without it out staying its welcome. Bob’s Burgers manages to pull that off pretty successfully.

The story is a crazy ride, a Scooby-Doo type mystery including its own theme park and twists and turns, that keeps you engaged. Underneath the craziness are some nice explorations of the strength of family, supporting one another and characters finding inner strengths they didn’t know they had. None of which is layed on too thick.

The other trick with something like this is to get the extended cast right which it does with the Fischoeders, Grover, Felix and Carlton (David Wain, Zach Galifianakis, Kevin Kline) who are at the heart of the mystery. There is also the use of some fun musical numbers that work well.

Taking 20 minute cartoons to the big screen is hard, but with Bob’s Burgers they’ve done a pretty good job, managing to maintain its rather off beat style in this bigger story. If you’re wondering, I’m not a particular watcher of the show, but it still worked pretty well for me.