‘The Bob’s Burgers Movie’ Review: The Series Arrives on the Big Screen with Its Comic Identity Mostly Intact

Like “The Simpsons” and the “Rugrats” before them, the Belchers are making the (coronavirus delayed) animated jump from televisions to movie theatres with “The Bob’s Burgers Movie.” The brainchild of show creator Loren Bouchard (co-directing here with Bernard Derriman), the beloved series “Bob’s Burgers” follows the Belcher family, owners of the eponymous, perpetually struggling burger joint by the sea. Its twelve seasons have charted the hardships of parents Bob (voiced by H. Jon Benjamin) and Linda (John Roberts) to maintain their business and marriage while raising their kids: boy-infatuated Tina (Dan Mintz), oddball musician Gene (Eugene Mirman), and irascible Louise (Kristen Schaal). 

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The film finds a launchpad in each of their trademark everyday tribulations, including Tina’s rump-hungry quest for love and the dichotomy between Bob’s fatalism and Linda’s charmingly cloying optimism. At the offset, financially strapped Bob and Linda are given only a week to scrounge the money to prevent the bank from seizing the restaurant’s assets. Soon, a massive sinkhole collapses directly in front of the restaurant’s entrance, certifying their certain doom. Meanwhile, the Wonder Wharf, the dodgy pier amusement park down the street is celebrating its 80th anniversary. Both events collide in a murder conspiracy that implicates the Wharf’s owner and the Belcher’s landlord Calvin Fischoeder (Kevin Kline), and solving its mystery might be the only way for the Belchers to avoid financial ruin.

Like the series that birthed it, “The Bob’s Burgers Movie” delights in being many things at once: a musical, a murder mystery, a coming of age story about the awkward years. Its biggest disappointment lies in its songs; they are both too few and not strong enough, disrupting the film’s overall comic flow rather than aligning with it. Here is a high bar set by the series that the film struggles to clear. The show’s use of music has become one of its signatures, but the film’s anemic songs (like its underwhelming, missed opportunity eleven o’clock number “Not That Evil”) only serve to make the passages between them more separate, like disparate episodes strung together. By the time a new one begins, you have forgotten there were songs in the film to begin with, and each strains to be as funny as the rest of the comedy.

The conceit and emotional arc of the film are in the testing of each of the Belchers’ bravery and nerve, and this is also slightly disjointed. Some of the Belchers’ arcs are rushed or shoehorned into the finale, with underdeveloped threads on Bob struggling to turn his anxiety into action and Tina questioning if she is more interested in the fantasy of love than love itself. Some character conflicts are thinly explored between being presented early and quickly resolved in the end. Perhaps the creators are taking for granted that the audience is arriving well-studied in a dozen seasons’ worth of character development to fill in these gaps, and that is somewhat understandable. Though it ultimately pulls off its emotional and comic endgame when it brings the family together at its climax, the film still presents some missed opportunities that could have allowed it to stand more on its own thematically.

But aided by the unabated madcap dexterity of Schaal’s vocal performance, Louise’s arc is the most satisfying among them. “The Bob’s Burgers Movie” belongs largely to Louise, focusing on how she is caught between two phases of youth: the carefree childhood years and the burgeoning self-awareness of pre-teendom. If the film becomes mostly an extended play on the series’ traditions and tropes by spreading the characters thin, it does something wonderful with the one it devotes its efforts towards. As she has shown in the series, Louise is bold but not always brave. Here that is explored as a coming of very specific age, one where you want to be more than you are (older, cooler, shed of things that make you look like just a kid) but resist letting go of the safety net of early childhood.

When a series as episodic and intentionally stuck in time as ‘Bob’s Burgers’ is adapted to film, it inevitably faces the existential question of its purpose, whether or not to push the series’ narrative forward or to exist simply like an extended episode on a larger scale. As much as “The Bob’s Burgers Movie” appears to be sticking with the latter option, Louise’s story finds a way to nod toward the former. But realistically, we should maybe expect the series to stay frozen in time.

Where “The Bob’s Burgers Movie” succeeds is in enriching the tone of its already strong foundation. The series’ wholesome-ish hilarity lies in how it layers its sweetness between irony, sometimes diverting relatable feelings with a sideswiping belly laugh, and here Bouchard and Nora Smith’s screenplay is similarly deftly navigated to avoid oversentimentality. Bob’s Burgers has always thrived by being somewhat like “Leave It To Beaver” by way of a less scabrous Todd Solondz. That balance tips slightly towards the cuddly end in the film’s final stretches, but it pulls off its emotional beats without becoming treacly. Instead, it offers some moments of emotionally surprising depth—though it might require previous investment in the series to recognize their significance. 

“The Bob’s Burgers Movie” is nevertheless satisfying for its undiminished comic brilliance throughout, and for how confidently its sensibility transitions into big-screen entertainment. For fans of the show, the film extrapolates on the series’ lore while remaining light on fan service for its own sake, preserving its humble reputation. Fan-favorite running gags, like its many running puns and Gene’s constant unintended double entendres, are present but casually deployed, as is the show’s nature. Similarly, some famous comedy names crop up in scenes, but are blended into the film seamlessly rather than having attention brought to them, keeping the focus on the unflashy family at its heart. Without compromising its genuine warmth and sometimes cringe-inducing relatability for a cheap cash-in, “The Bob’s Burgers Movie” emerges with its good name intact, even if it doesn’t get there with much ambition. [B-]