David Silverman's THE SIMPSONS MOVIE

[mouton]

THE SIMPSONS MOVIE
Written by James L. Brooks, Matt Groening, Al Jean, Ian Maxtone-Graham, George Meyer, David Mirkin, Mike Reiss, Mike Scully, Matt Selman, John Swartzwelder, Jon Vitti
Directed by David Silverman

Homer Simpson: I can’t believe we’re paying to see something we can see at home for free.

It has been eighteen years since America’s ultimate nuclear family introduced themselves to the television-watching world. Their popularity and critical favour have waffled in waves over the near-two-decade span of the series’ life, but they have also become pop culture icons and a source of constant comfort and laughter through widespread syndication and DVD sales. And so the question I’ve heard tossed around the most leading up to the release of their first foray in the land of the big screen is why did they wait so darn long to get here? The reason doesn’t matter really; it’s the sense of entitlement Simpson fans have regarding the series and these characters that is somewhat frightful in its level of expectation. (Although if you’re interested to know, series creator Matt Groening and creative mainstay, James Brooks, wanted to place all the focus necessary on perfecting the television series without having anything take away from that. When they finally decided to go forward, close to the turn of the century, there were disputes over final script approval.) The pressure alone to deliver a hilarious feature that will appease the fans, the masses and the studio execs alike would be enough reason for me to never consider making it. Yet THE SIMPSONS MOVIE is finally here and from the moment little Ralph Wiggum pops out of the 20th Century Fox tag to trumpet triumphantly with the tune we all know well, it is clear that the whole “Simpsons” clan is happy to have arrived. As someone who would subscribe to a 24-hour “Simpsons” channel if one existed, I am just as happy to see them too.

The “Simpsons” folks know this is big. They almost seem to acknowledge it right away when the film opens with the biggest “Itchy & Scratchy” cartoon ever created. Itchy the mouse and Scratchy the cat get on about their usual, violent antics, but they do so while taking the first steps on the moon. THE SIMPSONS MOVIE is one small step for Springfield and one giant leap for television animated series everywhere. What does a leap of this size entail exactly? Rather than string four episodes together, “Simpsons” creators opted to tell a story that was too big to encompass on a small screen. In doing so, there are both elements lost and gained. The expansion means longer stretches between punch lines, which can be frustrating at first, as you want director, David Silverman (a one-time regular director of the series and former creative player at Pixar) to pick up the pace. Also, the story itself is much more linear than most of the television episodes that find Homer & company starting in one place and ending up somewhere entirely unexpected by episode’s end. (A recent example would be beginning with weaning Maggie off her pacifier, which leads to Homer taking sleeping pills, which finds him causing injury to all of Springfield’s fire department and ultimately ending with corruption in volunteer fire fighter work.) The movie follows the Simpson family as they once again find themselves the target of all of Springfield’s animosity after Homer commits a selfish blunder to eclipse the hundreds of blunders that came before that. Once the film finds its pace though and adjusts to its newfound size and stature, or perhaps once this fan boy became accustomed to the grandeur of it all, the laughs roll out rapidly. It may be mostly tame but it is also riotous and faithful.

A bigger screen means an opportunity to take some of the Simpson characters further than they have ever been. (It also means some characters don’t get any spoken screen time – sorry Patty and Selma.) Lisa meets a boy who transforms her into the giddy girl she’s repressed so many times before. Marge finds an assertive voice that elevates her above the doormat status she all too often assumes. One of the more prominent storylines, which I’m carefully trying to avoid being specific about for those of you who are trying to go in to the movie as clear as possible, finds Bart questioning what his life would be like if he had a father figure who wasn’t such an impulsive goof all the time. In one of THE SIMPSON MOVIE’s greatest achievements, it breathes new life and depth into characters that have spent almost two decades trying to remain the same. The one constant that needs to remain that way to avoid throwing the world order out of alignment is, of course, Homer. As Homer is accustomed to making monumental mistakes and learning lessons from those mistakes shortly afterward, his movie mistakes are nothing new for him. And like usual, he will see the error of his ways and make many more mistakes by the time a sequel hits.

THE SIMPSONS MOVIE is a rare, successful experiment in defying expectation and pressure to become a film that honours its origins while moving forward at the same time. As the town of Springfield breeds a self contained awareness that requires more than just a casual glance to appreciate fully, I’m not sure how well THE SIMPSONS MOVIE will play outside of its fan base. That said, anyone who has had the fortune to spend any amount of time with the people of Springfield since 1989, will find their first feature to be filled with a humoured familiarity that serves as a reminder for how they’ve been able to stick around for so long. And now that the my Mac widget that has been counting down the days until THE SIMPSONS MOVIE has finally run its course, I can rest easy knowing that all my expectations were met and it probably won’t be quite as long until the Simpsons find themselves on the big screen again.

www.blacksheepreviews.blogspot.com

[tabuno]

Mouton acknowledges that the move from television to big screen something was gained and lost in the transfer but was satisfied with the overall production and looks forward to sequels. On the whole, I thought that the transfer successfully revealed the Simpson family and maintained the characterization and feel of the television series. However, the move was big enough for me and I thought the opportunity for something bigger was omitted. Tom Hanks had a cameo but that seemed to be all in terms of star status that the television series has been noted for. The small additional stretch of the characters that the fans have come to love still seemed like a small step instead of a big step that a big movie screen is expected to fulfill. I'm a little disappointed as is my wife that the movie wasn't has hilarious as it might have been. I was left wanting something more in the way of depth, but of course, it's the Simpsons I'm talking about here. So dah!

[Chris Knipp]

David Silverman's THE SIMPSONS MOVIE

A big party. . . entered very late

Review by Chris Knipp

I'm not sure what "directed" means for a movie like this. The Simpsons TV series and this movie are the brainchild of the original series' "creator" Matt Groening and its "developer" James L. Brooks. This movie that is the result of work by "11 writers, 17 actors, and a huge team of South Korean animators" (The Guardian) is an 87-minute animated feature whose images, characters, and plotting are an enlarged version of a popular, one might say beloved, TV series that has run for eighteen years. The surprising thing is that all these people have come up with something that's coherent, consistent with the series, and in the view of fans, worthy.

For one who has never watched The Simpsons, what is there to admire here? Peter Rainer of The Christian Science Monitor says, "The movie is best when it just riffs on our compacted memories of the past 18 years of episodes. Fortunately, that's most of the time." But for the non-fan, that unimaginable individual—like myself—who has never watched more than five or ten minutes of the show in all those years, this is precisely the trouble, and not at all fortunate. A movie built of insider references will bring no chuckles unless the action onscreen is funny in itself. That didn't happen as often for me as it did for the devotees who no doubt made up 99%of the cinema audience. But I would be the first to admit there is a wealth of cleverness here; and in fact, this movie is not "just riffing" on anything, and does work on its own—even if, for a non-Simpsonian, watching it is a bit like being shoved into a big party full of people everyone else knows but oneself.

The series, and hence this movie, both appear to be smart—but sort of dumb-smart—which is to say it appeals on many levels. It has adult references and witty wordplay and makes continual passes at topical political satire, but its moment-to-moment action is hardly sophisticated. Isn't this true of all animations—that they may be adult in sophistication or sexuality, but their visual effects appeal to the child in us? In fact The Simpson Movie when I saw it—at a matinee—seemed to be most appreciated by the tots in the audience—whose bright little tinny voices merged eerily with some of the characters'.

The film's official summary says, in part, "Homer must save the world from a catastrophe he himself created." But while that's true, the subject of the movie is only incidentally, if constantly, Homer and his family, or the things that they have "created." The Simpsons are the main characters, and they're vivid ones. That's a singularly resourceful baby girl; Bart's a disenchanted boy, and Homer's one dumb and clumsy man. If wife Marge has any characteristics, they're not very evident--except for her enormously high blue beehive hair; but that, for a Fifties-style housewife, does nicely. But the big topic of the movie isn't this family but, loosely, the crisis of the environment and the corruption and indifference of the government in dealing with it—which only follow the equal indifference of the public.

The eco-rock group Green Day gets booed for making an eco-pitch and then sinks into the town's polluted lake to be seen no more. Later when Lisa Simpson goes down the street knocking on doors with her Irish friend to drum up interest in the polluted lake, almost every door is slammed in their faces. Homer gets a pet pig, with which he develops an almost perversely intimate relationship. ("Maybe we should kiss just to break the tension," he tells it at one point.) The pig crap he puts in a small silo in the back yard. Efforts to wall off the lake to keep it clean have been successful, but Homer breaks through the wall with a truck and dumps the silo in the lake, after which it immediately becomes toxic enough to create monstrous mutants. Ultimately Springfield is an eco-disaster and is banished like Katrina victims by being encased in the giant plastic Super Dome.

The Simpson Movie has important references to real things and people. The US President is now Schwarzenegger . Tom Hanks is a spin doctor for a corrupt EPA headed by the Cheney-like Russ Cargill. Homer saves Springfield, the Simpsons' mythical town, from a dire fate indeed. But first it gets encased in that humongous globe—though baby Simpson knows a way out. Knowing the escape route, the Simpsons run away to Alaska, which Homer considers his kind of place because every inhabitant is given a thousand dollars to shut up about the state's natural setting being subjected to every imaginable indignity and exploitation. Will Hanks, Schwarzenegger, the EPA or the state of Alaska sue? I guess not. As the saying goes, any publicity is good publicity.

And though I'm not a fan of animation, a movie that makes frank reference to some important issues in a comic way and appeals to virtually every age level is hard to dislike. The drawing is unexciting. One will look in vain for the kind of visual ingenuity one finds in the best anime, or the kind of magic of sound and image one gets in Disney's Fantasia. What the images have is fast action. This is like Looney Tunes on speed. It leaves Looney Tunes in the dust. Though the childlike element remains, this is more cerebral stuff.

Does this movie "mean" anything, though? Does it have a "message"? Of course it is a mockery of ineffectual efforts to curb pollution, of public indifference and political dishonesty. An interesting foil for Homer Simpson, a clumsy parent at best, is Flanders, the pious neighbor, who offers little Bart the possibility of time with an adult that's affectionate and upbeat. It seems like there's a Hom-lier message afoot: a real dork can save the world, and kids may be best off sticking with the dysfunctional family they've got rather than shifting to a niftier-seeming one they wot not of.

(There's a very savvy commentary on the movie by Ed Gonzalez in Slant.)

[oscar jubis]

THE SIMPSONS MOVIE (2007)

I love movies too much to waste precious time watching television. Over the past couple of decades I've made two exceptions: The Sopranos and The Simpsons. My trepidation about The Simpsons Movie was that the content wasn't going to justify the running time of a thetrical feature. I'm relieved to find that, while it doesn't deviate from the format of the show, The Simpsons Movie manages to expand the typical program plot into something that's not or doesn't feel artificially streched out. All the familiar elements are here: the toon-within-a-toon antics of Itchy and Scratchy, the cameos (Tom Hanks and the rock band Green Day but not Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is voiced by an actor), and cultural references_the Harry Potter phenomenon and a number of films including Titanic, An Inconvenient Truth, Escape from New York and The Truman Show. The punch lines and visual gags come at you at breakneck pace at the expense of organized religion, Big Business, Government institutions, advertisement and the citizens of Springfield, a microcosm of America. It even mocks the Fox Network's relentless self-promotion and our willingness to pay for something we can get for free at home. Groening and company take advantage of the comparative freedom offered by the film's PG-13 rating to show Bart's privates and the bus driver inhaling from a water pipe. The Simpsons Movie is a most satisfying translation of our beloved TV show to the big screen.

*I appreciate the link to Slant's review. As a matter of fact, I was planning on making similar comments than those contained therein. Among them, the creators' understandng of family and community problems and the forces that bind and divide these social entities. I also love the economy with which the film ridicules conservative notions of the effects of a child being exposed to homosexuality when Ralph watches two cops kissing and automatically exclaims: "I like men now".

[Chris Knipp]

There is a lot in the movie. I was only giving what got through to me on first viewing. That's why I cited Slant. Besides which, Ed Gonzalez is a very good critic, very smart and articulate. And he, like you, has watched a lot of Simplsons episodes.