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The Simpsons Movie

Review By: Michael Dance
MichaelDance@TheCinemaSource.com

The Simpsons Movie is a perfectly respectable adaptation of the now-iconic television show. It has a few laugh-out-loud moments, plenty of jokes that will make you smile, and does a good job of incorporating most of its many characters. Still, the argument that you could be watching the same thing on TV for free is all too valid, and what’s more, the movie’s plot would have felt stale ten years ago, let alone today.

The plot is your basic Homer Redemption story that the show has done fifteen or sixteen times a year for the past nineteen years. This time it’s spruced up in a random save-the-environment plot: Springfield’s denizens keep dumping garbage into its lake, which is on the verge of becoming so toxic it will turn into some radioactive black hole. Just when they’re about to clean it up and fix the problem, Homer dumps a silo full of pig droppings in there because he doesn’t want to wait in line to dispose of it properly. That Homer is one crazy guy, eh?

The result is that the government puts a giant impenetrable dome over Springfield so that they can’t harm anybody else. You can pretty much fill in the rest of the plot points by yourself: the whole town may or may not get mad at Homer. The Simpsons may or may not escape and hide out until Homer’s finally convinced to take responsibility, save the town, and prove to Marge that he can be a good husband and father. Yawn.

I’m going to go ahead and admit right now I really haven’t seen that many episodes of The Simpsons. But I’d estimate that half of the ones I have seen had something to do with Marge having doubts about her husband, and her husband coming through in the end. It’s been done.

A lot of the jokes are really funny. The movie is keenly self-aware (it hurries to point out that you could be watching the same thing on TV for free) and to be fair, the whole dome-over-Springfield bit is unique and provides a lot of comic opportunities for the many townspeople fans have come to love over the years. There’s plenty of the show’s signature throwaway gags and most of them hit the mark. Also true to the show’s tradition are the celebrity cameos; there’s not too many here, but the ones they have are pretty A-list in quality.

I’m just sick of Homer. That’s the main thing. “Oh, he’s stupid…that’s hilarious.” I may be committing Simpsons-blashemy by saying this, but he’s just plain not funny anymore, and the insistence on giving him the central role time after time is, while exactly what everyone expected, still disappointing. I don’t know. I’ve always been a Bart guy, myself, so you ...