THE SIMPSONS MOVIE

Written by Fantasma el Rey

Hey, gang. It’s the movie we have all waited so long for, finally out on DVD, The Simpsons Movie. Here are all our favorites from the television show in a 90-minute feature film. Marge, Homer, Lisa, Bart, Maggie and the entire town of Springfield gather together to provide…well, not much at all really. So join me now as I reflect back on the hour and a half of my life that I will never get back and could have spent doing something more productive, like watching episodes from the first five seasons of the show, way back when they were funny.

So here is the plot in a peanut shell. Homer adopts a pig about to be slaughtered after a Krusty Burger commercial shoot and takes the thing home, naming it Spider-Pig. After two days Spider-Pig’s waste, which Homer stores in a homemade silo, is full. What to do? Homer being Homer decides in a hurry to dump the silo into Lake Springfield, which by the way has recently been somewhat cleaned up thanks to the efforts of Lisa. The pig’s waste mixed with the existing gunk in the lake turns the entire body of water toxic and the town has to be contained in a glass dome. And now it’s up to Homer to redeem himself by saving the town, his family, and his friends from the mess that he created.

Along the way we get a couple of laughs, well mostly just light chuckles, smiles really and not many at that. The film has moments and that’s it, much like the current state of the TV show. We do get to see some firsts, such as Lisa’s boyfriend, Bart’s embrace of the Ned Flanders way of fathering, Marge says “God damn,” and we get to see Bart’s “doodle,” but it still isn’t enough to make me want to see this one again in its entirety, ever. The DVD does contain some okay extras that might be worth the purchase for die-hard fans, one being the commentary by James L. Brooks, Matt Groening, Dan Castellaneta, and Yeardly Smith, the others being American Idol segments and Homer’s monologue for The Tonight Show.

Besides the fact that I think this film is ten years too late I couldn’t help but get a bit excited at the opening credits, seeing as I chose not to see this thing in the theater and save ten bucks. That excitement was fleeting for even in the opening minutes of the movie I could see it was going nowhere fast and was reminded again why I no longer watch the show and haven’t for years. I do enjoy catching the reruns of those early seasons when Homer was an average, not-so-bright dad and Bart was a true hell raiser. Ah the good ol’ days.