The Simpsons Movie

Release Date: July 27, 2007

Watch Date: April 8 – April 9, 2023

 

    I grew up watching and loving The Simpsons. Every Friday night my family would get take out, sit in the living room, and eat and watch The Simpsons. It became a family tradition that didn’t fade until I was a teenager, and even then it faded out slowly and sporadically. I had to cover my eyes during the ‘Itchy and Scratchy’ sequences, mom’s rules. When this movie we came out, we saw it in theatres, as a family, and purchased it as soon as we could.

    The best part about this movie, I think, is the game of Where’s Waldo you get to play every time you watch. I notice a new character in the background that I never had before, but the main characters, our constantly repeating recurring characters each get a line or two, which is appreciated when you have literal decades of characters you could pull from. Still, even seeing the familiar faces from old episodes you hadn’t seen in years can bring a smile to your face, whether or not they interact with our main cast.

    The pacing of this film is slightly off. It feels like one long episode of The Simpsons, which I I enjoyed quite a bit and is a major contrast to ‘The Bob’s Burgers Movie’ which felt like…well, like a movie. Yes, the stakes are way higher in this film than any traditional Simpsons episode could pull off, but it still hits similar beats in a familiar way that makes it easy to slip into the familiar, comfortable, feeling you get when watching one of your favorite shows. I don’t think the family spends enough time in Alaska, it takes them a long time to get there, and they don’t really do anything once they’re there. It really just served as a place to ‘go’ and not for any reason in particular than maybe the Simpson family simply hadn’t been there before.

    Lisa and Maggie are pretty much ignored from the point of view of the main plot lines, which mostly feature Bart finally reaching his breaking point with his father and Marge reaching her breaking point with her husband. Sure, the town of Springfield is at risk of destruction, but that’s not the main point of the film. I think both Bart and Marge finally being fed up with Homer was entirely overdue, though I’m sure it’s happened to lesser degrees in the show a few times, but I think both of them forgave him way too easily in the end. Bart is bought over by a bomb and a motorcycle and Marge, while she has every right to be happy that Homer did in the end choose the town that she loves, and by association his family, still has years of him letting her down and making the opposite choice.

    Therapy. That’s what this family needs. I shouldn’t be rooting for Marge to leave Homer, and by the end of this film, I kind of am.

    They avoided the temptation of adding too many celebrity cameos, and the two they do stick in fit really well. Why not have Tom Hanks, because who doesn’t love Tom Hanks, and opening up the film with Green Day is a little odd, and kind of sets you up to believe multiple celebrities will be popping by Springfield, but when you take into context the environmental message of the film, Green Day’s inclusion makes sense. The creators of this film absolutely could have crammed this thing full of celebrities, I highly doubt they would have had any trouble finding willing participants, so I really respect the restraint that they showed.

    Maybe it’s nostalgia on my part, and if it is I don’t care, but I love this movie. I adore it. It brings me back to family times sitting in the living room and laughing together, times you can never recapture – not when you’re grown with a family of your own and your brother has flown off to Japan to start his own family and your parents are much more interested in Ice Road Truckers or people panning for gold or trying to figure out the mystery of a really deep sink hole on a tiny island in the Atlantic. So maybe the world has shifted away from The Simpsons in recent years, and maybe I’ll never recapture that magic – but it gives me hope that some day, somehow, Bob and I will be able to recreate that feeling with another show, with our own kids, and they too will have fond familial memories of times spent with their parents and sibling, being together, and laughing at a shared interest.