"The Simpsons Movie" Talkback (Spoilers)

Yes...I guess he had one decent one-liner there. Me and all my friends thought it was about to be a gay moment with Smithers after all that time...
 
I admit it. I was wrong. I expected this to flat out suck but it was like a movie-length classic era episode. Great movie, I actually cared about the characters again, and it was funny too.
 
As a huge fan of the "classic" Simpsons and a long-time hater of the "new" Simpsons, I enjoyed the movie. It was mired by recent-style humor and absurdity, but had enough wit, heart and charm that it reminded me of the good old days.
 
It's hard for me to be objective about this movie because reviews and clips have spoiled a lot of the jokes and plots points already. Perhaps I should've known better. Then again, I didn't have a lot of faith in the movie, so maybe that's why I wasn't more careful.

But I am fairly confident that this is a good movie.

Is it as good as a classic-era episode of the show? No, because it's a movie. The Simpsons in its purest form will always be those half-hour pieces of comedy gold from 1990-1997.

Is it better than the new episodes of the show? HECK YES, and that's because the writers and voice actors stayed true to the characters. I can think of possible ways the plot could've been better, maybe focused on Springfield a bit more, maybe not gone to Alaska, maybe given more time to great characters like Mr. Burns and Principal Skinner, but in the end what makes this movie worth seeing is that the characters are handled well. Their dialogue feels a lot more real than it has in years.

And it sounds real, too; I concur with the people who praised Julie Kavner's performance in Marge's farewell tape. It was, honestly, a surprisingly good performance. (It would have been more surprising if I hadn't read about it in a review earlier, and no one's sure where she got the video camera from, but -- whatever.)

And that brings us to the topic of Ned Flanders. He is BACK! Finally the writers have remembered that Flanders is supposed to be an enviably perfect neighbor who loves his fellow man to a sometimes annoying extent, NOT a fundamentalist bigot. I also liked his introduction into the story: you would expect him (especially after these recent seasons) to be angry or at least somewhat disgusted at Bart after the stunt he pulled, but instead he's the only person in town who shows him some compassion.

Some other good plot bits were the callbacks to the sinkhole and the motorcycle, which is the kind of clever writing you usually only see on American Dad these days.

Most of the gags were very good, although there was nothing truly classic that made me laugh hysterically, unless I was just spoiled by seeing and hearing about a lot of them. And the more newish awkward, confusing, unfunny stuff was mostly absent, rearing its head only in a few of the Alaska scenes (Boob Lady, for example).


So in conclusion: thumbs up.





You can say G--damn in a PG movie. The (un-detailed, cartoon, nonsexual, child's) penis and the middle fingers do help push it up to a PG-13, though, although they're not exactly deal-breakers.
 
Not as funny as I had hoped, but still funny. Bart's doodle and Homer's birdies were two of the funniest things. Moe getting robbed was great, as well as the bomb diffuser bot shooting itself. When Green Day said "enviornment", the audience went silent with the crowd in the movie, and my chuckle echoed, so that was cool. Treasure of Ima Weiner. Awesome.
I guess things would have been funnier if the audience didn't read EVERY SINGLE SIGN out loud. They even sang along to Spider-Pig. Agh.
Good plot, though, and it was funny, despite the audience and Homer being more of a jerk than funny most of the movie.
 
Best Movie ever! I loved the movie it was great. Spider Pig was funny. The dome was hilarious and that Springfield was the most disgusting town in the history of the world. I wonder how they will keep Season 19 great after the movie. The movie should have finished off The Simpsons though it would have been a great way to end it. I have one word to finish my post Sequel!:zoidberg:
 
From what everyone was making out to be I expected more. I still thought it was a great movie though. I liked Beavis and Butthead Do America and South Park the movie better. My favorite scene was when homer and the pig were sitting on the couch watching tv and Homer suggested maybe they should kiss to break the tension.
Hopefully it will get a good dvd release with deleted scenes during the first release and not having to wait to get a souped up version. I'll buy it on dvd when it has the delete scenes with it.
 
I caught it last weekend and it was more than satisfying. I honestly thought Lisa's subplot was pointless and they've done the whole "Lisa falls in love with a boy with similar interests" thing plenty of times, but fortunately they didn't focus on it too much. I felt that the Boob Lady was in the movie for a bit often also. I also didn't really like the copout near the ending with Maggie coming out of nowhere and knocking Russ Cargill out. That being said, I really liked it.

The movie definitely feels bigger. Sure, it wasn't to the level of its first eight seasons, but it was way better than any recent episode. Not quite to classic era quality, but it was near it. Nearly all of Cargill's lines were humorous, my personal favorite line of his being the "Have you ever tried going mad without power?" exchange. Surprisingly, the Bart skateboarding thing was actually funny and I admit to laughing at Ralph's comment. A lot of the supporting characters got a lot of good gags such as Wiggum's "I thought he was handling a dead body, but then he said lawn trimmings. Ya gotta listen" line and his suicidal robot. When I saw Dr. Nick in the mob I kept waiting for him to have a line, and well, they did have one.

Julie's performance in the videotape was the fantastic, by the way. That whole sequence was great, and I liked how they followed it up with the "To be continued... immediately" thing, which played with whole movie idea nicely, as did the fake "Are You Smarter Than a Celebrity" ad at the bottom of the screen and Homer's first line.

Overall, there were laughs throughout, even to the end, with the Springfield anthem. I would honestly be happy if the franchise ended now, on a good note, but lord knows they'll kept it going as long as possible. Oh, and for those of you asking what happened to Plopper, he'll be appearing in the series, as well as Colin. So, yes, he lived.

edit: One thing I forgot to mention was that Josh Weinstein and Bill Oakley were never asked to be a part of the writing staff for the movie, which sucks since they were a part of the series throughout its prime and throughout none of the seasons after its prime.
 
I let the Maggie thing go because I was happy to see them use the character. It seems that as the show has declined, the writers have just given up and only use Maggie as a gimmick or just make sure she's in the scenes. The movie showed that although she can't talk, she's a daring and intelligent character in her own right.
 
Mr Bean's Holiday just came out to DVD this week in Hong Kong. should be region 3 and playable on NTSC screens. i saw it awhile ago and wasn't too impressed. although, i liked how Mr. Bean spoke even less than he did in the first Bean movie.
 
I just came back from this movie. My favorite part was when Bart drew over the picture of his family on the wanted poster and the guy at the store said "Oh my God its them!" and he saw five people that looked the way Bart drew them.
 
She's always been daring and inteligent or you forget her saving Homer on "Papa's got a brand new gun" She's never been used than often not even on the "Classics" She's only had very few episodes or one or two scenes.
 
Which is why they made a crack about her being the forgotten Simpson? Because the writers didn't shaft the character rather then find ways to use her?
 
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that one. That was probably my second or third favorite part. I've seen gags like that before, but I'm a sucker for them.

My favorite part though would have to be Santa's Little Helper's line at the end though.
 
For some reason I loved the part where Homer does a double flip-off as he sinking down the sinkhole . . . only to get stuck and he uses the two middle fingers to frantically dig into the sinkhole as Springfieldans start clawing his forehead. I dunno why.

The movie was generally funny. Cargill got a lot of good lines and most of the Simpsons characters received at least one or two decent scenes. However, inbetween ten-fifteen minutes of pure gold there were five-minute stretches of boredom or flat-lines. The good in this movie outweighs the bad, though.
 
I saw it twice - on the day of the premiere and then again two days later XD I loved it; it was hysterical! I was laughing during the whole movie. It's just one of the funniest movies I've seen in a long time. I wasn't a very big Simpsons fan before I saw it, but now I watch it every day, and have rekindled an interest in it ^^

I can't even pick a favorite part, because the movie was just so great as a whole - although the thing with Mr. Burns and Skinner was very funny, as was the stuff with Schwarzenegger and Cargill.

I give it 100 stars out of 5 XD
 
Back
Top