Ruislip & Eastcote & Northwood Gazette
EMERGENCY (15)
THE BOB’S BURGER MOVIE (PG)
★★★✩✩
Fans of the cult animated sitcom will relish this feature-length episode cooked up for the big screen. But you don’t need to have tucked into any of the dozen series of the TV show to savour the wry humour and relatable characters.
The set-up is pretty simple. Morose Bob Belcher (voiced by H Jon Benjamin) is toiling at the grill of a failing family burger restaurant in an American seaside town. His wife Linda (John Roberts) remains relentlessly upbeat ahead of a crunch meeting with their bank manager, while their three kids have their own little dramas to deal with.
Precocious Tina (Dan Mintz) is plucking up the courage to ask a lad to be her “summer boyfriend”,
The frat-boy comedy gets all political in an engaging Sundance Festival winner from director Carey Williams and writer KD Dávila.
Two university pals are about to embark on the “legendary” – a tour of every end-of-year frat-house party – when they discover a girl passed out in the living room of their apartment.
While that may seem like par for the course in a film like National Lampoon’s Animal House, here, it’s a huge problem. Kunle (Donald Elise youngest child Louise (Kristen Schaal) is desperate to prove herself after being branded a “baby” at school, and Gene (Eugene Mirman) is trying to form a band after tapping the musical potential of the serviette dispenser and the rubber band.
These soapy subplots give way to something a bit more cinematic when a sinkhole opens up outside the restaurant and the remains of a murdered carnival worker are discovered inside.
There are catchy songs, quirky fantasy sequences and an amusing chase involving clam-shaped fairground cars. It’s not as edgy as South Park or as laugh-out-loud funny as The Simpsons, but Bob’s Burgers serves up medium-sized titters garnished with slices of heartwarming sentiment.
■ In cinemas now
Watkins) and Sean (RJ Cyler) are black, their flatmate Carlos (Sebastian Chacon) is Latino, and the stranger is a white teenage girl.
A trip to the hospital is the sensible course of action. But the lads fear they will be blamed for the girl’s condition.
A rash plan to dump her at a sorority house goes awry when they are chased away by a gang of white boys in togas. From here, the bad decisions pile up but the wellacted and sharply written film begins to lose its focus.
On Amazon Prime Video now