Friday, July 27, 2007

Best. Simpsons Movie. Ever


By my calculations I have watched over 1,400 hours of The Simpsons in my life. And that’s probably underestimating it a bit. I factored one 22 minute episode, 5 times a week, 52 weeks a year, times about 15 years. (It’s been on for 18 years, but I haven’t tuned in regularly for the past few years). I mention this just to get everyone up to speed. You know, make sure everyone knows that I've been a big fan of the show for more than 2/3rds of my life before I continue here.

When I first heard the long rumored Simpsons Movie would actually be coming out I was both very excited and a little terrified about the news. It’s been one of my favorite shows since I watched the series premiere with my Mom and my Grandma way back in 1989. But the show has suffered a much discussed decline in quality over the past several years, so I was afraid that the movie would be more "Now Simpsons" and less "Then Simpsons". I was worried that the movie 18 years in the making would totally suck. Well, I'm happy to say that despite my fear that The Simpsons Movie would not live up to the nearly 2 decade wait, it turned out to be a very enjoyable, rather funny, fast paced 87 minutes. I found myself laughing quite a bit, and I really had a good time watching. Pretty good plot they cooked up for the movie and it never felt like they were straining to make it work for the whole 90 minutes. Amazingly, I even teared up a bit during one of the scenes. Probably one of the most touching scenes the show has had in years.

I might be giving too glowing a review due in part to the excitement of seeing hundreds of Simpsons characters on a huge movie screen in a completely full theater, but I would definitely recommend anyone who was ever a Simpsons fan (regardless of whether you currently are or not) check it out. It’s certainly not on the same level of quality as say, the Frank Grimes episode, but certainly better than the last few years of the show. My theory is that they’ve been writing this movie for 6 years and they wanted to save the better jokes for the movie and not waste them on the episodes. Makes sense, right? They can half-ass the episodes, I mean what are they gonna do, cancel The Simpsons?

Random thoughts that I couldn't seem to work into the above text:

I was quite surprised by a very quick joke during Bart’s early skateboarding sequence. I don’t want to give it away here, but you’ll know it when you see it. It got quite a reaction out of the audience. I don’t really think anyone was offended (well, parents of the several really young kids aside) but we did not see that one coming. Also, while I thought maybe seeing it in context would make it funny, Spider-Pig is still not funny. However, Marge yelling out “Somebody throw the goddamn bomb!” was oddly hilarious. Never been a huge Marge guy, but that was pretty goddamn funny. One major downside for me, I never once saw Jasper, Abe’s friend from the retirement home. His “Who shot who in the what now?” is one of my all-time favorite lines.

3 comments:

Ian Zamboni said...

Hrm, you must have been watching a lot of reruns on VHS religiously those first six or so years, because the Simpsons wasn't syndicated until 1994 at the earliest.

Anonymous said...

Great Scott! You must have just made Ned Flanders a very happy man :D Ay wait a minute hes dead :(

Thanks for the review. Heh the advertising hype for it has been pretty funny in a circus freak show kind of way.

Anonymous said...

I couldn't agree more, man. I had to stop myself from laughing just so i wouldn't miss more jokes!

LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails