Mostly, this is just a long episode of the show, which is enough to make it one of the smartest and funniest movies of the year.
By: Elise Nakhnikian
About 20 years ago I asked Matt Groening, the creator of a sweetly surreal cartoon called Life in Hell, if he’d contribute to a magazine I edited. He was all tied up on an animated cartoon for the Tracey Ullman Show. You wouldn’t believe how time-consuming animation was, he said, but call back in a year or two. This thing should be over by then, and he’d have some free time again.
That thing was The Simpsons, and Groening never did get a break not that he’s complaining about it. His lovingly satirical stories about a family of crudely drawn yellow people with funny hair, which is one of the best TV shows ever and was one of the very first hits on the then-new Fox network, is still going strong 400 episodes later. Meanwhile, Groening and his co-developer/co-writer James L. Brooks along with a small army of writers, producers, directors and animators, not to mention the actors who voice the characters, most of whom were with the show at the beginning have made their long-awaited Simpsons movie. And they’ve called it what else? The Simpsons Movie.
There’s nothing fancy about the drawing in The Simpsons, which looks more like The Flintstones than The Incredibles. Of course, even relatively crude animation takes a long time to draw, but a lot of the time the team invests in the show is put into writing and refining the intricately layered humor, which ranges from slapstick and sight gags to social and political satire. The situations are often absurd, but the dialogue and characters are firmly grounded in human nature: The most subversive thing about the Simpsons is how all-American this barely functional family is.
The Simpsons shares its humanism and heart, as well as its humor, with Taxi and The Mary Tyler Moore Show, two other brilliant James L. Brooks spawn but the animated show is the most realistic of the three, and one of the most honest depictions of an American family ever to air on TV.
Television families on shows like Father Knows Best, My Three Sons and The Brady Bunch were virtually frictionless, their members as perkily perfect as so many mannequins. Things started to loosen up in the ’70s and ’80s, thanks in no small part to Brooks, but even Brooks’ surrogate-family shows have stiffened a bit with age, though they felt joyfully loose-limbed when they were new. When I catch a rerun of Taxi now, characters like Christopher Lloyd’s Jim Ignatowski are a tad too self-consciously kooky, and the air in the soundstage where they were shot is a little too still.
But The Simpsons hasn’t aged a day more than its characters. Like a less political version of The Daily Show or a kinder and gentler South Park, it serves as a gleeful guide to what The Onion calls "Our Dumb Century." That’s partly because the Simpsons themselves budding juvenile delinquent Bart; his blissfully ignorant dad, Homer; his endlessly patient mother, Marge; his perennially under-appreciated and overlooked sister, Lisa; and his accident-prone but imperturbable baby sister, Maggie are recognizably flawed. But it’s also thanks to the time and attention that have been invested in creating their hometown of Springfield: its topography, its economy, its shopping malls, and dozens of its other citizens. Best of all are the signs, products and media that always vie for our attention. That constant, low-level social critique, more than the more obvious environmental or other "political" messages, is what makes the hinges of my mind creak open as I watch The Simpsons, the rare show with the wit to mock consumer culture messages most of popular culture simply transmits.
But what does the movie do that the TV show doesn’t?
The most obvious and probably least original change is that, like a lot of other recent comedies, it makes frequent nods to other movies, from Titanic to An Inconvenient Truth. The capper, a spoof of Disney movies that involves both Bambi and his mom and the bluebirds that helped Cinderella dress for the ball, is pretty funny, though.
The movie’s also longer than the TV show, of course at 89 minutes, it’s about four times the length of an episode after ads so there’s a little more of everything, including bigger emotional arcs. People fall in love a lot: Lisa falls for the cute new Irish boy in town, who falls for her too and "the best part is, he’s not imaginary!" she burbles to Marge. Bart kind of falls for the Simpsons’ fundamentalist neighbor, the perennially cheerful Ned Flanders, finally realizing that he’s the caring, involved dad Bart has never had. (There’s a wonderful scene of Flanders putting his boys to bed, lovingly DustBusting the crumbs from their covers.) And Homer falls for a pig.
For better or worse, the movie’s plot is more complicated: Homer disposes of the pig’s waste in Lake Springfield, precipitating an environmental crisis and forcing the Simpsons to flee Springfield to escape their irate neighbors.
But mostly, The Simpsons Movie is just a longer than usual episode of The Simpsons on a bigger than usual screen which is enough to make it one of the smartest, funniest feel-good movies of the year. From the sweetly off-key rendition of the theme song sung by Ralph Wiggum under the opening credits to Maggie’s first word, which is the last word spoken, The Simpsons Movie lets us luxuriate in the people and places we’ve loved watching for so long. It repeats common gags from the show, like having famous people guest-star as themselves (Tom Hanks appears in a public service announcement, saying: "The U.S. government has lost its credibility, so it’s borrowing some of mine.") It brings out nearly all the main characters in Springfield, though many make only the briefest of cameos. And there are the usual jokes about the low standards at Fox TV and tons of funny signs, sight gags and lines.
As always, some of the jokes make you laugh because they’re so close to the truth, like President Schwarzenegger (yup) declaring: "I was elected to lead, not read." Some are funny because they play to that constant nagging question of why Marge doesn’t dump Homer ("Lately, what’s keeping us together is my ability to overlook everything you do," she tells him sadly). And some are just plain silly. "And now to find my family, save my town, and drop 10 pounds!" Homer vows as he heads back to Springfield.
You go, boy.
Rated PG-13 for irreverent humor throughout.

