Way too Late at the Movies: The Bob's Burgers Movie

I feel bad I didn't like 2022's The Bob's Burgers Movie.

No spoilers, first of all, so you're not worried about that.

It's a murder mystery, with plucky Louise, Tina, and Gene on the prowl to find out who really killed Cotton Candy Andy at Wonder Wharf six years before this story.

I liked the joke of the prizes at the wharf being the only witnesses to the crime.

But the rest of the movie, well . . .

They made it a musical, first of all. And while Bob's Burgers in general does a lot of fun things with music, in this case it's a miss, with Grover Fischoeder's song being almost incomprehensible in the falsetto voice the actor used.

And I know they unpersoned the voice of Jimmy Pesto due to the voice actor's politics, but not to give Jimmy a single line in the movie was, well. stupid. What an opening for him, so see a gigantic hole and plume of water suddenly erupt out of the street in front of Bob's restaurant. Sure, Bob has the typical stress of having to make a payment to the bank on his restaurant equipment, but is the stress really there is Jimmy Pesto isn't there to razz him about the situation?

I was worried when they announced a movie that what was going to happen is that they'd take a script more fit for one of their episodes and stretch it out into a movie, and that's what they did. I mean, they could have taken a better episode, like The Belchies, for that treatment, but we got a Bart and Lisa solve the crime thing instead.

I still feel for Bob, though, as he's staring through the window at the hole, literally watching his business go down the drain. That part spoke to me. And seeing Lin and Gene's fascination with buttons was also pretty funny. But as whole, while the story worked, it just felt drawn out. And the musical numbers were mediocre at best.