The Simpsons Movie

[CrazyLegs]

I can not wait to see it

[innerSpaceman]

Oh, and I was completely entertained, and find that - with a Simpsons movie - a string of good jokes is all I want.

I found the first third of the film particularly strong ... particularly because it was consistently hysterical. The jokes stopped coming fast and furious after that, and the film settled into merely "good."


But two-thirds a good and one-third a great = damn fine Simpsons movie, as far as I'm concerned.

[Isaac]

I was pleasantly surprised by this movie. It was far better than I expected. The storyline is like an extended episode but that's to be expected, consider the show has been on the air for almost 20 years. Overall, I'm content.

[innerSpaceman]

Was the South Park movie that much funnier than a good episode?


That seems to me the fairest comparison ... but I thing comparing any TV-show movie to its source TV show is fair game. In which case The Simpsons Movie is one of the best of the breed, imo.

[Gemini Cricket]

Originally Posted by innerSpaceman

Was the South Park movie that much funnier than a good episode?

I thought the South Park movie was a lot funnier than any episode that came before it.
They had a lot more freedom to do what they wanted to in the film. The unbleeped swearing was a big one.

I was talking to Chernabog about the SP movie in comparision to the Simpsons movie. The Simpsons creators should have pushed limits (you know, like they used to do) with the film but now they seem to leave it up to South Park to do that...

[Ghoulish Delight]

It wasn't that I was looking for funnier than a good episode. I was looking for something that gave it a reason to exist as a movie at all. Something extra, something that pushed it beyond being just a long episode. Do I know what that something is? Hardly. Hell, after 17+ years of episodes, I'm hardly convinced such a thing exists. Double hell, after 17+ years of episodes, I'm downright certain that there's nothing left to even justify further TV episodes, let alone a movie. The characters have nowhere to go, everything they do is just rehash and caricature.

I thought the first 1/3 of the movie started out strongish, but it petered out quickly. By my math, it's 1/3 a good and 2/3 a poor = should-have-done-this-12-years-ago

In the case of South Park, yes I think they did a good job of moving it beyond just a long episode. Both in terms of the scale of the storyline and the scope of the character arcs. And most importantly, they did it long before they ran out of ideas.

[innerSpaceman]

Well, I think Bart's skateboard ride pushed a limit, and did so with a nod to the iconic title sequence of show. But I admit there's nothing in the actual plot or character arcs that hasn't been done 17 times before.

Of course, my perspective is from someone for whom The Simpsons has only 10 seasons, and has been off my personal air for the last 8 years.



And by way of comparison points ... there have been plenty of TV-show movies I've enjoyed that did not go beyond any plots or character arcs covered on the free TV show.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by innerSpaceman

Well, I think Bart's skateboard ride pushed a limit, and did so with a nod to the iconic title sequence of show. But I admit there's nothing in the actual plot or character arcs that hasn't been done 17 times before.

And I conceded to "a couple funny but throw away moments" in an earlier post. Homer giving the bird was another. I reiterate my yawn.

Of course, my perspective is from someone for whom The Simpsons has only 10 seasons, and has been off my personal air for the last 8 years.

I'm from nearly the same perspective. I perhaps watched one or two more seasons (which I surely did not enjoy), and have been sure to catch at least one or two episodes from each subsequent season, just to reaffirm my belief that the show continues to suck (and I have yet to be proven wrong). But the tired plot lines and character motivations they used in the movie would have been equally tired 8 years ago.

And by way of comparison points ... there have been plenty of TV-show movies I've enjoyed that did not go beyond any plots or character arcs covered on the free TV show.

I'll reiterate that I didn't not enjoy it. It just didn't impress me.

[LSPoorEeyorick]

Well, to each their own. The group I went with laughed from Ralphie's "da-da-da-daaaaaa!" pretty much until the credits rolled. I though that it WAS more than a string of jokes. Julie Kavner's VO for the wedding video scene was lovely and moving. I thought that it worked very well as stretched-out episode with interesting A, B and C storylines intertwined. And the quotes ("clap for Alaska, Lisa!" among them) were perfectly quotable.

The Simpsons, to me, has never tread the line that South Park does. And I'm OK with that. Where both are critical of society, one uses a subtle wit and one uses bombastic wit, and there's room for both. But I don't see how pushing the subtler one to a more bombastic place would stay true to the Simpsons' form. Bart's doodle was edgy relative to your standard episode (season 1-10.)

[Ghoulish Delight]

I must clarify, I wasn't looking for over-the-line edginess. Although I think that while Bart's doodle is edgy relative to early episodes, I don't think it (or anything in the movie) represents the same edginess relative to society that the early episodes did. But that's a whole other discussion.

What I mean by "more than just an episode" has more to do with actually creating something that matches the scale of the big screen on the whole. Boundary pushing is part of that, but only a small fraction.

To illustrate, I'll say that I think my favorite part was the opening bit. Not the Itchy & Scratchy cartoon itself per-se, but the self aware bit with Homer in the theater afterwards. That, far beyond anything else in the whole movie, showed a keen understanding of how to take the characters from the small screen and do something befitting the big screen. It used the medium in that beautifully self-aware, self-effacing way that The Simpsons once used television. But it peeked in the first 5 minutes and never returned to that. Boo-hiss I say.

That's not to say I wanted 90 minutes of Bart talking into the camera. But that opening got me all excited that they truly did something more than a 90 minute episode. So perhaps that's part of my perspective. In its first hit, it soared well beyond my expectations, and then very quickly plummeted back down to mediocre.