Okay, I’m back at home and ready to divulge on my two cents. Here goes…
Well, it WAS funny, I’ll give it that much. I became disillusioned with the Simpsons back in the early 00s when they allowed their standards to severely slip and seemed almost smugly contented to let them go on sliding, thinking that if they made enough self-aware gags on the matter then they could get away with it. It’s been a long, long time since I was able to watch any new Simpsons output and have a good laugh with it, and on that level I found the movie to be almost therapeutic. The trailers and TV spots weren’t particularly promising to me, and I was all prepared for this film to be excruciatingly bad (it was really on my Mum’s insistence that I saw it, though the positive reception had certainly lifted my spirit’s a little), but I was pleasantly surprised at just how much fun it was. There were moments when I felt close to being back in my childhood and the era of the Simpsons’ heyday, the old school writing was so spot-on, but equally there were a number of intrusive misfires here and there to remind that I wasn’t (two words: Dr Nick. Why anyone thought that gag was either necessary or funny is beyond me). But overall, I think the majority of humour was a nice throwback to the days when the Simpsons was a good-natured show, edged with well-grounded satire, and Homer’s egocentrism and stupidity wasn’t exaggerated or allowed to dominate the scene to the point where it got
really annoying.
Still, for all the hype and publicity the production team were determined to milk from it, I also feel that the film fell strangely flat. The story, when all is said and done, was really nothing more than an extended episode of the TV series…it never really took off as a movie, and certainly wasn’t worth all the months of extensive tout leading up to it, let alone the thousands, if not millions, of dollars they must have poured into promotion in the US alone. If this movie really was “18 Years in the Making”, as the trailer claimed (and I know that it hasn't been
quite that long, but this project has nonetheless been on the backburner since at least the fourth season), then it’s actually a pretty miserable disappointment - just shy of two decades, and the best they could come up with was a thinly-plotted narrative that’s about as imaginative as the title and, at times, downright poor, echoed in the vast number of plot elements which were set up as being greatly significant within the first third of the film and then whittled away with little consequence. There’s Lisa’s new environmentalist boyfriend, for example, who’s totally underdeveloped, and if he played any kind of functional role in the story’s development and resolution, I must have missed it. There are also loose ends, like Homer’s pig, who plays a crucial role in the early stages of the film only to disappear as soon as the drama starts to build without a hint of genuine closure (still, it‘s preferable to a repeat of the Mojo or Mr. Pinchy incidents, as I was fearing, animal lover that I am), and Grampa’s prophesy, which gets a lot of attention to begin with and then completely fizzles, never to be spoken of again (both betrayals of the film’s origins as an episodic TV series, and of the writer’s relative inability to focus upon anything for more than 22 minutes). And then there’s the issue of the villain, who was just so…bleh.
True, he got one or two amusing lines (his observation upon going mad with power was certainly quote-worthy), but had none of the charm or character of the show’s own, ready-established villains, who were curiously sidelined. I’ve already mentioned how miffed I was that they excised Sideshow Bob completely from the final cut. Presumably, it would only have been a very fleeting appearance, but since it belonged to my favourite character, it was the moment which I’d been most eagerly awaiting (no matter how bitterly my enthusiasm for the rest of the Simpsons may have waned, there’ll always be room in my heart for dear sweet Bob and that magnificent hairstyle of his). The minimal input from Burns and Smithers was also something of a minus point. They may not be the titular characters, but I think that if you go to a Simpsons movie and get hardly any Burns-Smithers banter at all, you’re entitled to feel cheated. Their small appearance in one of the (many) end-credits gags (which, sadly, amounted to roughly 50% of their overall contribution to the film) seemed to suggest that they too had initially been allocated a slightly bigger role which had been mostly cut, and the absence of any scenes actually explaining their post-film situation left yet another void in the storyline for me, in addition to being symptomatic of sloppy editing.
That said, there was some nice stuff, like the Bart-Ned bonding, which in my opinion was easily the strongest aspect of the plot itself...nice to see Flanders being cut a little slack there.
Quote:
Originally Posted by frankie_fan
Besides the Spider-Pig theme, the best part was Spoiler Below Lisa punching out Bart after he chants, 'Lisa's got a boyfriend!' I was expecting Bart to ruin the moment as usual, but Lisa took him out bad!! (In case you're wondering, I'm a Lisa Simpson fan!  ) |
Ditto. And you know, seeing Martin Prince finally get the opportunity to lash back at his own tormentors also proved to be a hugely cathartic moment for me...
I suppose my problem is that the vast hype surrounding the film, along with its overwhelmingly positive reception, had led me to believe that the Simpsons Movie would indeed be doing something really special, something that would really stand out from the TV series. But honestly, Bart’s brief but full-on nudity scene aside, was there anything in this movie that they couldn’t have done on the small screen against their regular canvas? As I’ve said, the only thing that really marked this out for me was that it was a heck of a lot funnier than I recall the newer episodes of the TV series being when I last watched them. One of the early concerns which I’d previously stated about this film was the sinking feeling that it was being churned out largely for the sake of it and, to be honest, I’m still relatively convinced that this was assembled at least partially as a giant publicity stunt; an effort to revitalise interest in a franchise whose once-dedicated fan base had been growing more and more lukewarm by the minute. For all the effort they put into producing and marketing the Simpsons movie, I’d much rather they’d worked harder on trying to clean up the TV series and return it to its glory days. I may not watch it any more, but if that kind of quality was ever restored then I’m sure that word-of-mouth would have reached me eventually. Oh, and give Sideshow Bob his
own feature film. After the shabby way they treated him in this film, I reckon they owe it to him. By the time you read this, I’ll no doubt already be on my way down to the FOX studio with my proposal and a bunch of armed guerrillas.
