beer good
Well-Known Member
A while back, I had the chance to chat briefly with Simpsons producer/screenwriter Dave Mirkin. When I asked him if there was anything they hadn't yet managed to do in 18 seasons, he laughed: "Full frontal nudity!"
Well, he'll have to come up with a new answer now.
The Simpsons Movie has all that we've come to expect when a US TV series gets turned into a movie; a little more nudity (sadly, not Marge), a little more cursing ("Goddamn"), a little more booze and drugs, bigger special effects, more drama, the death of a beloved character or two (I'm not saying who) and an A plot that dominates almost completely.
The latter is a pity, really, because it means we lose some of that constant barrage of jokes, non sequiturs, references and mad C plots that always dominated good Simpsons episodes. Instead, and it really is good compnensation, we get a more solid story which might not be 100% original, but which works for 90 minutes. Even though it's a cartoon sitcom, The Simpsons has always had a lot of heart and humanity at its core and that works wonders here; even though I'm laughing my ass of for a lot of the movie, the scene that really remains is one in the first half where that big North American ape Homer gets to expound on how he sees life in a monologue that's as close as I've come to weeping in a movie theatre this year (so far!). In spite of all his madcap schemes and less-than-below-average IQ, Homer has always been a man who's on some level painfully aware of how lucky he is, and that works wonders here.
But mostly, it's a lot of fun. We get meta jokes (the black board!), we get references to other movies (Spiderpig!), we get completely pointless celebrity guests, we get some mild-mannered political satire, we get a bunch of not-too-bright yet well-meaning charcters trying to get out of ridiculous situations, we get... a hell of a good time, really. You can tell that they've brought back most of the old gang (Brooks, Groening, Jean, Mirkin, Reiss, Swartzwelder, Meyer, Scully etc) to write; they manage to stretch a Simpsons ep to 4 times its normal length and make it better than most of the entire seasons the show has had lately. I've waited for this movie for more years than I'd like to count, and after the laughter fades, what remains is a peculiar feeling that I think is the absence of disappointment. They delivered, goddamnit.
(Oh, and we get Maggie's first words to anyone else, too.)
4/5, I think.
Well, he'll have to come up with a new answer now.
The Simpsons Movie has all that we've come to expect when a US TV series gets turned into a movie; a little more nudity (sadly, not Marge), a little more cursing ("Goddamn"), a little more booze and drugs, bigger special effects, more drama, the death of a beloved character or two (I'm not saying who) and an A plot that dominates almost completely.
The latter is a pity, really, because it means we lose some of that constant barrage of jokes, non sequiturs, references and mad C plots that always dominated good Simpsons episodes. Instead, and it really is good compnensation, we get a more solid story which might not be 100% original, but which works for 90 minutes. Even though it's a cartoon sitcom, The Simpsons has always had a lot of heart and humanity at its core and that works wonders here; even though I'm laughing my ass of for a lot of the movie, the scene that really remains is one in the first half where that big North American ape Homer gets to expound on how he sees life in a monologue that's as close as I've come to weeping in a movie theatre this year (so far!). In spite of all his madcap schemes and less-than-below-average IQ, Homer has always been a man who's on some level painfully aware of how lucky he is, and that works wonders here.
But mostly, it's a lot of fun. We get meta jokes (the black board!), we get references to other movies (Spiderpig!), we get completely pointless celebrity guests, we get some mild-mannered political satire, we get a bunch of not-too-bright yet well-meaning charcters trying to get out of ridiculous situations, we get... a hell of a good time, really. You can tell that they've brought back most of the old gang (Brooks, Groening, Jean, Mirkin, Reiss, Swartzwelder, Meyer, Scully etc) to write; they manage to stretch a Simpsons ep to 4 times its normal length and make it better than most of the entire seasons the show has had lately. I've waited for this movie for more years than I'd like to count, and after the laughter fades, what remains is a peculiar feeling that I think is the absence of disappointment. They delivered, goddamnit.
(Oh, and we get Maggie's first words to anyone else, too.)
4/5, I think.
