The Bob's Burgers Movie

 

Directors Loren Bouchard and Bernard Derriman turn the outrageous, chinless humor of Bouchard's animated series Bob's Burgers into a laff riot with music in The Bob's Burgers Movie. It's an animated feature so densely packed with killer lines that I feel it's a no-brainer for immediate rewatch.

The film opens with a shadowy murder at a pier carnival, after which the audience is introduced to the stars: Beta-male Bob (voiced by H. Jon Benjamin) runs an artisanal burger joint near the pier with powerhouse wife Linda (voiced by John Roberts) and with the occasional assist from their three neurotic school-age kids -- Tina, Gene and Louise (Dan Mintz, Eugene Mirman and Kristen Schaal, respectively).

Business is slow. Rents are due and prospects are bleak. Then a sinkhole opens just outside of Bob's, skeletal remains are discovered by spunky-but-developmentally arrested Louise and all events begin to merge with those in the opening sequence.

No question, utter nonsense, but there are narrative gold nuggets, too -- Tina's improbable crush on a nasally classmate, Gene's ridiculously uninspired idea for a garage band, Louise's traumatic bunny-ears backstory, Linda's smothering motherliness that feels both affirming and toxic, Bob's seeming total lack of heroism, and three completely whack musical numbers that might not have the audience humming after the credits but are showstoppers nonetheless.

It's a "family" movie in all the wrong ways but is so much fun.