Review: The Simpsons Movie

It may not be the best...movie...ever, but it’s the best...Simpsons...movie...so far.

The Simpsons Movie
Photo: 20th Century Fox

Despite popular belief, The Simpsons still matters. Those who’ve stayed the course have watched the show transform into something almost avant-garde: Its cutting social commentary and hilarious gags used to coast off cleanly delineated narrative through lines, where now its humor ricochets onto audiences off idiosyncratic acts of storytelling tyranny. Its experimentations with form and function aren’t quite Dadesque, but they’re close.

An episode from 2000 titled “Pygmoelian” largely concerns Moe getting plastic surgery but also features Bart and Lisa chasing a pink elephant around town and straight into a meeting for gay Republicans—a seemingly arbitrary bit of nonsense that connects succinctly with the theme of identity in which a person changes their face only to realize the efficiency of their old one. We may now consider this great episode a metaphor for The Simpsons Movie.

Because this film has been a long time coming, its lack of actual movie-ness comes as something of a surprise. So, not quite cowabunga, but it’s still good, it’s still good! I was smitten as soon as Ralph Wiggum, pop culture’s purest and funniest expression of the id personified, appeared from inside the zero in the 20th Century Fox logo to sing along to the studio’s theme music, only to be taken aback by how little Matt Groening & Co. exploit the fact that the Simpsons are now tearing up the world in widescreen.

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Homer isn’t too far off the mark when, at one point, he calls us suckers for paying money to see what we can get on the small screen for free. But even if The Simpsons Movie doesn’t overplay its hand, trying as it does to appease fans of the show both old and new—the film’s narrative though line is as straight as an arrow, but the gags are as queer as all get-out—it’s surprisingly aggressive in its engagement with our contemporary political malaise.

The movie begins with an Itchy & Scratchy sketch during which Itchy leaves his fellow astronaut Scratchy on the moon and returns to Earth to be elected ruler of the free world, with Hillary Clinton as his second in command. Itchy is cleverly seen as a distillation of 50 years of American political rectitude and aggression, from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush.

But while The Simpsons TV show celebrates Itchy’s butchering of Scratchy as an ongoing commentary of “wholesome” Walt Disney family values, television violence, and the dangers of parental complacency, the movie considerably ups the political ante, afflicting the mouse with a rather humane sense of remorse for his natural-born enemy. This all connects to a later scene during which President Arnold Schwarzenegger (essentially Rainier Wolfcastle with brown hair) inspires our pity, regretting having delegated authority to his advisor, the string-pulling Cheney-esque monster who attempts to shoot Homer in the face by the end of the film, and not reading the literature that damns the people of Springfield to life inside a huge dome.

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The Itchy & Scratchy episode is also a lubricant of sorts, easing one into the elaborate political discourse of the film, which begins with Green Day drowning in Springfield’s lake after lecturing the town’s citizens about global warming. (The hymn played at their funeral service is a cute joke that the band’s fans and naysayers will no doubt appreciate: “American Idiot: Funeral Version”!) This premise seems predicated on a line from my favorite episode of the show, “Lisa the Vegetarian,” during which Homer declares, “Rock stars—is there anything they don’t know?” The movie, like that episode, also features a pig in a very crucial role. Homer gives the hog a home, then a name (first Spider Pig, then Harry Plopper), before storing the animal’s feces (and some of his own!) in a silo that he dumps into Springfield’s newly conserved lake, thus transforming the town into an environmental hellhole.

Before you can say “Katrina!,” Springfield is under the EPA’s lock and key. The members of the Simpson clan fulfill familiar roles as agents of chaos and change within this nightmare: Lisa, strident in her political conscious and weak-kneed in the face of romance, tries to bring Springfield’s environmental woes to the attention of the city’s clueless citizens; Marge, a busybody with a tragically less refined sense of direction, senses warning in one of Grandpa’s ramblings; Maggie, whose wordless gifts of physical and mental ingenuity go largely unnoticed by the adult world, saves the day in unexpected ways; Bart, whose newfound fondness for Ned Flanders is an excuse for a dynamite string of Freudian teasings (one joke aptly ends in a display of yellow balls—hello, PG-13 rating!), unconsciously catalyses everyone to action; and Homer, ever the hypocritical dumbass, is ostracized by his neighbors for their tragedy and must arrive at a place of selflessness, no doubt fleeting, in order to redeem everyone.

Springfield’s crisis is both political and pop in its allusiveness, from Katrina to John Carpenter’s Escape from New York, with people stalking the streets like zombies and Moe boasting about his self-appointed position as the town’s Emperor. Equally delicious: The immigrant Simpsons being given $1,000 when they arrive in Alaska for “allowing the oil companies to ravage the state’s national beauty” and the National Security Agency getting results—finally!—from spying on everyone’s phone calls. The movie understands how the nightmare of our current political state of affairs manifests itself in different areas of our lives, which the writers convey through zesty hit-and-run bits of comic absurdity. My favorite is the movie’s rebuke of right-wing opinions about the root cause of homosexuality, when Ralph, upon seeing Bart’s pee pee, immediately yells out, “I like men now!”

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No TV show has ever acknowledged with such persistence the complicated role that institutions like the church play in our daily lives and the wide-ranging emotions—skepticism, love, disrespect, hope—that are crucial to keeping families alive and going than The Simpsons, and the movie complements its biting religious ribbing with its completely sincere belief in spiritual need. Schwarzenegger, seeking salvation, accepts his duty as president and tries to read the literature in front of him but is still unable to save Springfield from annihilation, the news of which sends Reverend Lovejoy’s sheep to Moe’s Tavern and the town’s drunkards to church—a sight gag that cuts deeper than no other in the film.

The movie’s subversive streak isn’t as acutely pointed as that of the great “Homer Badman” episode from 1994, in which Homer is falsely accused of sexual harassment, nor does it ever break your heart like 1995’s “Marge Be Not Proud,” which ends with Bart understanding the importance of repentance, but it’s funny because it’s true, and like the show’s recent 24 spoof, it uses its pop savvy and narrative circuitry to emphasize the bonds that tie families together.

One joke that the show has long driven into the ground is the sight of Homer choking Bart with his hands. In the movie, Homer’s rage and its effects on Bart allow for the bittersweet understanding of compliance as a major part of our social conditioning. Sight gag transforms into gag reflex when Bart loses Ned’s favorite fishing pole and instinctively reaches for his neck, expecting the same punishment from his daddy substitute that he always gets from Homer. These bold yellow characters continue to verify our strength as people, families, and a nation, and their agelessness continues to stress that their journey, like ours, is an eternal act of learning. It may not be the best…movie…ever, but it’s the best…Simpsons…movie…so far.

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Score: 
 Cast: Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright, Yeardley Smith, Harry Shearer, Hank Azaria, Pamela Hayden, Tress MacNeille, Marcia Wallace, Philip Rosenthal, Joe Mantegna, Albert Brooks, Russi Taylor, Karl Wiedergott, Billie Joe Armstrong, Tre Cool, Mike Dirnt, Maile Flanagan, Tom Hanks  Director: David Silverman  Screenwriter: James L. Brooks, Matt Groening, Al Jean, Ian Maxtone-Graham, George Meyer, David Mirkin, Mike Reiss, Mike Scully, Matt Selman, John Swartzwelder, Jon Vitti  Distributor: 20th Century Fox  Running Time: 87 min  Rating: PG-13  Year: 2007  Buy: Video, Soundtrack

Ed Gonzalez

Ed Gonzalez is the co-founder of Slant Magazine. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle, his writing has appeared in The Village Voice, The Los Angeles Times, and other publications.

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