When “The Simpsons” first premiered in the sun-up years of the Bush-41 presidency almost twenty years ago, it was ridiculed as anti-family, anti-decency, and televised cartoon garbage; today, it’s considered a television landmark, and its titular family is regarded as patently American. And while cast-members and die-hard fans alike have bemoaned the show’s steady loss of originality, it has remained a firm staple of world culture.
Roughly the length of four episodes, The Simpsons Movie has virtually no stylistic connection to the television show. Yes, the residents of Springfield are still four-fingered and yellow, suffering from an epidemic of overbites and chinlessness. But the hand-drawn animation has been replaced by a modern lavishing of colors and shadows, bringing the characters into a new dimension. The camera movements are fluid, the look is more luminous, and every scene is crafted into perfection—a far cry from the rough, jagged-lined style of the show’s advent. It’s jarring, after so many years, to see such a grand mainstay of American television redrawn via such boundless technology.
And while The Simpsons Movie is undeniably funny—a symphonic background rendition of “Spider Pig,” an appearance by Tom Hanks, satirical nods to the Fox Network—the originality of humor is sometimes questionable: A scene midway through the film, set in a gas station, seems lifted directly from Wrongfully Accused. The filmmakers’ attempts to include as many characters is admirable—Barney, Milhouse, Nelson, the Comic Book Guy, Moe, Mr. Burns, etc—but leaves almost all of them with only one or two lines. And the gutsy, no-holds-barred writing of the show’s first years seems lost for good. Still, this could have easily gone very wrong—I can only imagine how many times the script was rewritten, the dialogue was challenged, the storyline was recast—but works out superbly. There’s a fresh layer of character development—is that possible this far in the game?—that makes the Simpson family even more endearing. And, let’s face it, they’re the reason we’ve kept watching these last 18 years.
by Adam Balz | Source: 29th Century Fox 35MM Theatrical Print
28 Jul 2007 10:18 AM | Submit Comment
