Future Man

Everything feels meticulously, lovingly plotted by the show’s creators, but as it’s happening it leads to numerous surprises and big laughs. Future Man is what happens when giddy, geeky and inspired storytelling is allowed to go full throttle.

Future Man is a conventional sitcom, despite the projectile vomiting and relentless penis jokes. The cast is serviceable, and Ms. Coupe is more than that. But the central joke--that the initially hapless Josh is not at all what the future was hoping to find--is a good one, and it keeps paying off.

The farce, like the puns, the gross-out humor, and the pop culture jokes, can be excessive, especially over 13 episodes. But the charm of the cast, including Ed Begley Jr., Keith David, Haley Joel Osment, Martin Starr, and the late Glenne Headly, makes it all easy to watch.

The characters are appealing and their story, through all its ridiculous twists and turns, genuinely involving; even when you know where it's going, it's a treat to get there. For all the mayhem that occurs along the way, the show is good-hearted and aspirational and steeped in family feeling.

A foul-mouthed yet unrelentlessly clever delight. [13-26 Nov 2017, p.17]

It’s a dumb, profane and predictable show that works because it never once aims for greatness. Everyone here just wants the viewer to enjoy the ride.

Future Man is an uncomplicated and often hilarious escapist comedy. Josh Futterman may be in over his head, but it's a lot of fun for the rest of us.

Characters in this series are ridiculous because they blend media of all types and use it for comedic purposes. This is what makes Future Man a series made for pop culture fans.

Future Man may not be sophisticated comedy but its unabashed cleverness and fun are hard to resist.

With that many hours to fill [13], and that much talent behind and in front of the camera, the show might have chosen to make a broader statement on video game culture. As is, the show is like a fun game you can immerse yourself in, but not one that goes to the next level.

Once you know that Future Man is written and produced by Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Kyle Hunter, and Ariel Shaffir, the team behind the epically uncouth cartoon Sausage Party, further explanation becomes almost totally unnecessary. It's a comic onslaught against video-gamers and their culture of the past 30 years or so, with the occasional random shot at baby boomers so they won't be left out of the fun.

In Future Man, it bounces amusingly along for a while and suddenly becomes weirdly sci-fi serious. In the third episode, “A Riphole in Time,” there’s a plot twist that makes you wonder what you signed up for. Still, Future Man is intriguing enough to keep you going, but I wouldn’t call it one to binge.

Future Man is proudly puerile and in the early episodes, the lack of necessary grounding elements often make the broad jokes play as grating. Hutcherson, once treated by Hollywood as a heartthrob during the Hunger Games franchise, isn't an instantly successful choice for an Everyman lead and the push to judge Josh as pathetic reads as disingenuous and unsympathetic. As episodes progress, Hutcherson gets more comfortable and the character's lack of direction is better spelled out and the show improves around him.

Future Man is escapism through and through, but all those references can sometimes work against it. They remind audiences of what came before and invite a comparison that rarely works in the series’ favor.

If it figures out the proper tone and blend of stupid-smart jokes with its game cast, the series could potentially travel forward to a time when it becomes a great sci-fi comedy.

The pilot for “Future Man,” available Tuesday, takes a little too long to get to the show’s premise — viewers offended by the profane be advised: there are a lot of f-bombs — but “Future Man” is funny enough in its meta commentary on media culture that it’s sure to appeal to the young male audience it targets.

Despite the game energy of its cast, Future Man is mostly routine homage, with very little substance shoring up its derivative foundations.

Future Man is not unwatchable, but it’s pretty bad. ... The end product is another example of a TV series laboring to extrude a couple of hours’ worth of plot over 13 half-hour installments while substituting a knowledge of popular culture for storytelling chops and characters you care about.