I like Bob’s Burgers, an easygoing animated comedy about an underdog working-class family running a perpetually struggling hamburger joint. It’s a bit surprising to see it become a major motion picture after airing on Fox for twelve years — its low-key charms are right for the small screen. The creative team — creator Loren Bouchard, screenwriter Nora Smith, and supervising director Bernard Derriman — claim in interviews that they weren’t sure the show could be opened out to movie size until they did a series of Bob’s Burgers live-show concerts featuring puppets that cost $25 a ticket, and people liked it.

Which, I think you’ll agree, makes no sense whatsoever, at any level. People wanted to see a concert version of Bob’s Burgers featuring puppets? It cost $25 to see it? And it proves that a feature film version could work?

But the thing is, that’s exactly the kind of addled logic that would prevail within the world of Bob’s Burgers. Showbiz-maddened characters like Bob’s wife Linda Belcher (voiced by John Roberts) and eleven-year-old son Gene (Eugene Mirman) would totally argue for it, and struggle to put on just such a spectacle. Only it wouldn’t succeed.