Sunday, March 23, 2008

Movie Review: The Simpsons Movie

Starring:
Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright, Yeardley Smith, Hank Azaria, Harry Shearer

Director:
David Silverman (The Road to El Dorado, Monsters Inc.)

MPAA Rating:
PG-13 for irreverent humor throughout.

Release Date:
July 2007

Synopsis:
Homer must save the world from a catastrophe he himself created. It all begins with Homer, his new pet pig, and a leaky silo full of droppings - a combination that triggers a disaster the likes of which Springfield has never experienced. As Marge is outraged by Homer's monumental blunder, a vengeful mob descends on the Simpson household. The family makes a narrow escape, but is soon divided by both location and conflict.

My Two Cents:
Leave it to Homer Simpson to ruin not only his life and his family’s, but also of all the citizens of Springfield. After the Springfield lake’s pollution level reached its limits, Lisa succeeds in bringing attention to the matter and forbidding anyone to dumb any kind of garbage into. Meanwhile, Homer adopts a pet pig and that thing craps like crazy. Homer fills a large silo with pig crap, and his own, until it reaches the top and needs to be thrown away. Now, where do you think Homer dumps the silo?

The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) contains Springfield’s pollution problem by putting a gigantic dome over the whole town, sealing it away from the rest of the country. It doesn’t take long for the citizens to find out it was all Homer’s fault, and gather an angry mob to go kill him. Homer and his family must find a way to escape the dome, and also find a solution to EPA’s harsh measures.



Although the movie has its moments, it feels like any random TV show stretched to fill an hour and a half. There are barely any new characters, and the little CG they used for backgrounds, similar to Futurama, doesn’t really add anything to The Simpsons. There are no swear words, or anything else not previously seen in the weekly show. Well, there is one full-frontal nudity scene that is both surprising and disturbing at the same time. Still, it’s disappointing not to see the writers go wild with the movie to give us something different from what we’re used to, like Matt Stone and Trey Parker did with Southpark: Bigger, Longer and Uncut.

Anyone will be able to enjoy the pop-culture references and Homer’s stupidity, but fans of the show will get the most out of it. The Simpsons have been on the air for almost 20 years and it’s nice to finally see them in their own full-length movie. If they ever make a sequel I wish they dare to take things a bit farther, but I had fun as it is and recommend it to anyone who has ever enjoyed an episode of The Simpsons.

Score:

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1 Comment:

Anonymous said...

Although the movie did great, because it's The Simpsons, afterall, a lot of people didn't like it. I don't know what they WANTED it to be, or expected, or even DEMANDED it to be, other than a long episode, really. It must have been quite hard actually to figure out what to do for a movie, finally. While this may not be the best job they COULD have done, beh, I take it for what it is.

On the other hand, some people actually have called this the funniest episode in years.

I don't really care if there are new characters or not; I, like about all other fans, want to see all the old characters. Krusty sure was hardly around, for example...But you know, they had other things to do too.

I also don't care it didn't have bad language in it. Sure, this was basically their chance to do something, and they decided not to. I think that's actually good in a lot of ways. I think it would have been strange to see any character from the show say anything really bad.

People either typically loved it or hated it. Not a lot of middle ground, but there was some. I didn't expect or demand this movie to be a classic, or a new classic episode. Apparently other people did, hence they were disappointed. Aw well. Sucks for them.

I like it. It's a good movie.