***1/2 (out of ****)
Starring the voices of Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright, Yeardley Smith, Albert Brooks, Harry Shearer, Hank Azaria, Tom Hanks, and Green Day
Directed by David Silverman & written by Matt Groening, James L. Brooks, Joel Cohen, Mike Scully, and a whole lotta other people
2007
87 min PG13
There are two things I like best about “The Simpsons.” First, the show knows and forgives all the sins of it myriad characters, no matter how goofy or obsessive they are. Whereas a show like “SouthPark” can only sneer and gloat over all-too-human shortcomings, “The Simpsons” finds value in its characters and their human experience. You watch “SouthPark” when you want to join the “smart kids” in ridiculing the “stupid people.” You watch “The Simpsons” when you want to laugh at the human race you love. Like Garrison Keillor or even Terrence Malick, “The Simpsons” loves them for their failings.
The other thing I love about “The Simpsons” is harder to pinpoint. Like a madman in “Monty Python,” every character on “The Simpsons” is obsessed beyond all reason by one thing. Why does Itchy hate Scratchy so much? Why do some “Simpsons” characters resort to violence at the drop of a hat? Why is the new gym teacher obsessed with playing Bombardment every day of the year? There’s something about unbridled, exaggerated enthusiasm – in a real world often bereft of obsession – that’s endlessly refreshing. Homer Simpson is the lead because he isn’t obsessed by one thing, but by everything – an id almost completely unbridled.
My biggest fears for “The Simpsons Movie” were that it wouldn’t bother to adapt to the big screen and that it would fail to maintain direction and momentum for a feature length. But the result is kind of astounding. Not only does “The Simpsons Movie” maintain momentum, its opening half-hour is a frantic series of scenes, one delirious non-sequitur after another, disjointed and crazy, from which a plot only emerges gradually. To its credit, this movie is QUICK. Even a few slower bits toward the end of the second act – in which Homer wallows rhapsodic while estranged from his family – still move faster than a normal movie.
The “Simpsons” TV show has always been the most cinematic thing on TV. Visually, “The Simpsons Movie” takes the show’s look and expands it with deeper backgrounds, larger compositions, and 3-D layering. More than that, there’s something about its heavy reliance on dim purples and pinks that makes “The Simpsons Movie,” for all its head-pounding insanity, otherworldly and faintly hypnotic.
But plot. The EPA puts a giant dome over Springfield when the pollution in Lake Springfield makes it the most polluted city in the world (the scales are tipped by, of course, Homer). The micro-story is about Homer finally learning to not be so mindlessly, impulsively selfish all the time, and try to think about others for a change.
So the macro-story is an eco-thriller message movie and the micro-story is a classic story of redemption in which Homer can only save himself by laying down his life and desires to help others. Grandpa predicts the eco-disaster with an Old Testament prophecy in church. Despite what you might read elsewhere, Grandpa’s prophecy is comic but not a joke; in the reality of the movie, God really does speak through him. Similarly, by juxtaposing Homer with hyper-Christian Ned Flanders (refreshingly portrayed as an honest forgiver and not a hypocrite), Homer’s stumbling quest to save the town and win back his family through self-sacrifice to others is a model of New Testament redemption. Bart and Marge forgive Homer again and again (Bart specifically at Flanders’s suggestion) – how many times do I forgive my brother? Seven times seven times?
What the combination of the eco-thriller and the biblical fall-and-redemption accomplishes is couch a left-leaning concern in a structure more familiar to right-leaning churchgoer types who might reject it. The threat of environmental disaster becomes an Old Testament plague, but Homer’s ability to repent of his wicked ways means that it’s not too late for all of our Lake Springfields.
Evidence of “The Simpsons’” willingness to embrace all aspects of humanity is its approach to religion. It’s just one of many aspects of human life that given short shrift in most movies and TV, reduced either to cheap, shallow ridicule or hollow, distant reverence. On the DVD extras, “Simpsons” co-creator Matt Groening prides his TV family as being one of the few that actually goes to church, suffers the wrath of their jealous, Old Testament God, and is often seen going to hell.
Anyway, the only thing keeping “The Simpsons Movie” from being a four-star hit out of the park is its overuse of the word “government.” This used to only be a characteristic of your talk radio-listening hard-right uncle who seemed paid by the word “government” in his diatribes about what’s wrong with the world. But now that the Republicans have run the show for a while it’s the left that get to overuse that word. Which is fair, but it makes “The Simpsons Movie” a little more heavy-handed than I would have preferred. But, believe me, there’s nothing harder (and sometimes nothing more crucial) than getting just the right amount of subtly.
P.S. As I write this, the second day of “The Simpsons Movie’s” release, it is currently ranked #49 on the IMDb Top 250.
Finished Saturday, July 28, 2007
Copyright © 2007 Friday & Saturday Night
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