The Simpsons Movie

Alright then, I’m about to shit you up with what I say next, so brace yourself.

The Simpsons aren’t funny.

You have my permission to now go ape shit.







What? You want me to justify that outrageous statement?
Damn you people are demanding.
The fact is the Simpsons USED to be funny, once upon a time, but those days are long, long gone.

Now back in the day, the Simpsons was not just funny, it was genius. I will gladly sing its praises.
The episode Life on the Fast Lane (where Marge is seduced by a French bowling instructor) is one of the greatest half hours of television ever penned. No exaggeration. It is wonderfully paced, hilariously funny, beautifully subtle and tremendously moving (often all at the same time!)
Permit me the indulgence of quoting a few classic lines?

Worker-“But Homer, what do I tell the Boss?”
Homer- “You tell him I’m going to the back seat of my car, with the woman I love and I wont be back FOR TEN MINUTES!”

If you weren’t cheering for Homer when he said that, you have no soul!

So I loved the Simpsons as much as anyone back in the day, the show was essential viewing.

But nothing lasts forever, and over time all television series start to run out of steam. Characters get reduced to moronic catch phrases and exaggerated mannerisms and slowly the shows creators forget what made it good in the first place.

Homer has gone from a deeply flawed but well meaning man, trying to do the best for his family but failing through a combination of his own flaws and life’s cruel circumstance, to a freakish giggling lunatic (seriously, can we find the fuck wit that first had the idea to make Homer giggle like a little girl and shoot them in the head?) He spouts nonsense, gets hit by increasingly painful objects for increasingly diminishing returns.
The subtly, the beautifully crafted stories about the lives of these characters? All thrown away and replaced with a shit storm of annoying catch phrases and irritating cameos.
In fact the cameos give a good insight into what is wrong with the show these days. Way back when, the Simpsons mocked celebrity cameos with TV’s Troy McClure (you might remember him from such shows as the Simpsons, or Christmas Ape 2, Christmas Ape goes to Summer Camp.) Now they are doing the very thing they used to mock, with a completely straight face!
“Hi, I’m a celebrity of the moment, here for a very unfunny sequence because I am a publicity whore and I think the Simpsons is a good way to forward my worthless career.”
If I was a celebrity I would refuse to go on the Simpsons.
Oh yeah, you think, that is easy to say, but you would if you really had the chance.
No, actually I wouldn’t. If RIGHT NOW someone offered me the chance, sure I would, I’d like to be on TV, get to plug Harkovast etc.
But if I was already a celebrity? I’m already rich and famous! I would enjoy the opportunity to tell the Simpsons creators to fuck right off!

When the Simpsons movie came out, I assumed it would be utter shit like the show had become.
But I listened to people (always a mistake) and they told me that the shows creators had been saving the best jokes for the movie (thus making the show suffer.)
This seems an unlikely explanation since the show has been unfunny for over ten years now, but ever the optimistic I decided to give the movie a go on DVD (because it was cheap.)
Don’t listen to people.
People talk shit!

If they were saving the best jokes for this movie I can only assume the show now consists of nothing but Homer in an empty room crying because he has been raped…which is pretty much what has happened to the franchise when you think about it!

The Movie is all about…actually I’m not sure. Worse then that, I don’t think the movie makers are sure!
The plot is an erratic mess. Elements are introduced in a haphazard, thrown together way that doesn’t really flow towards anywhere or amount to anything.
To begin with, Homer gets a pig. Remember the trailers? With ‘Spider Pig’? Homers pet pig that he is holding up to walk on the ceiling? Wasn’t that funny? And then at the end of the trailer Homer says “He’s not Spider Pig, now he’s Harry Plopper!” I was excited to see what other funny movie reference pig humour Homer had in store.
The answer was none. I just told you ALL of the jokes about that pig. I am not exaggerating!
This is like showing a trailer with a big explosion and a guy throwing punches only to reveal there is only one explosion and the punches you saw are the only ones thrown in the movie. What a fucking rip-off!
The pigs large amounts of poop cause some sort of environmental chain reaction that means the town has to be sealed under a giant glass dome…I feel ashamed just writing that out here, and I DIDN’T MAKE IT UP!
So you are probably thinking the movie has an environmental message, right? Wrong.
Environmentalism doesn’t really go anywhere and the pollution problem is never really dealt with.

Lisa gets an Irish boyfriend, who isn’t really in the movie and that doesn’t go anywhere either. You’ll start to notice a trend with these plot elements….

The Simpsons flee the town to Alaska, and hilarity follows. By hilarity, I mean jack shit.
My wife used to live in Alaska, so our interest peaked to see what sort of comedy they would get at the expense of Alaska. The answer, of course, is fuck all. It feels like they just threw darts at a map to determine where this sequence should be set! There is absolutely no reason it is in Alaska and no comedy to be mined from this concept.

Homer ends up meeting a mystical native Alaskan shaman woman who sends him on a vision quest. That is what Native Americans do, isn’t it? Go on vision quests.
We can have white people in movies that don’t pray to God and get miracles. We can have Chinese people who don’t spend the whole film doing Kung-fu. We don’t seem to have to have every black character be a gangster rapper or a voodoo shaman.
But for some reason, racial profiling becomes okay as soon as we get to Native Americans.
Why must Native Americans ALWAYS do this stuff? Why can’t they just behave normally, like normal people do?
Even on fucking Star Trek Voyager, set in the future when humans no longer have religion, the one Indian guy never shuts the fuck up about spirit quests and “my people”.
So all humanity has united together to build the federation, except the Indians, who still seem to live in tee-pees!
Why can’t we have a Native American character who works in a shop? He likes playing video games and eats too much fast food. Let’s say he likes the girl at work, but is too nervous to ask her out. He might believe in the religion of the Apache tribe, but it never comes up in the story, the same way the Jewish characters or the Christian characters don’t have to constantly start praying or telling us what God thinks about the situation.
In other words, the guy is just a normal person, like everyone else! He isn’t a mystical spirit guide, he ain’t on a journey for his ancestors to learn the ways of the buffalo…he is just ordinary!
I have literally never seen a character like the one I just described. Am I the only one who finds that level of blatant racism slightly scary?
So anyway, Homer goes on a vision quest (something that has already happened in earlier episodes of the series where it was handled far better)
He then leaves the Native American chara…hahah…sorry! I almost managed to call her a character without cracking up!
He then leaves the offensive cliché and goes to try to win back his family, which is falling apart (something that has already happened in earlier episodes of the series where it was handled far better.)

The villain of the film is a guy from the environmental protection agency who wants to blow up Springfield with a bomb. Is this film trying to be shit now?
Interestingly, while watching the film I never realised this guy was the baddy till very near the end (when he abruptly became a James Bond villain for no explained reason.)
He was just so boring.
He was so bland, uninteresting and unfunny that it never occurred to me he was very important.

Homer learns to ride a motor bike on his travels (fuck knows, I am passed the point of trying to explain this shit!) and uses these skills to save the town. In town has gone all Mad Max while he was away and Moe is now king. But this goes nowhere and is soon forgotten about.

And then the movie does the first good move it has made so far.

It ends.

This movie is just crap.
It coasts on a wave of nostalgia from people who like the series and refuse to accept the awful truth. The show they once loved is long gone, and what remains is not only not as good as the show they used to enjoy, it is not good by any measure at all.

Fuck these yellow fuck wits!

By now a lot of you are probably angry at me. How dare I kill the sacred cow of your beloved Simpsons! The show is still edgy, right? Still relevant?

Well ask yourself this, which are your favourite episodes and which series of the show do those episodes come from?
Were any of them from the last series?
Were any of them from the series before that?
In fact, were any of them made within the last ten years?
Don’t bother to check, I will save you the time by stating the answer that we all know but not all of others are willing to face up too.

(Life on the Fast Lane was from series 1, in case you wondered about my own pick.)

The Simpsons WAS funny. In fact it WAS one of the greatest television programs of all time.
Anyone who denies those statements is a philistine.
But they are statements in the past tense.
If you say them in the current tense or future tense, you would be lying.
Just like all the Simpsons fans are lying to themselves.

Conclusion- Spider Pig Shit.

Harkovast
“Hi, I’m a celebrity of the moment, here for a very unfunny sequence because I am a publicity whore and I think the Simpsons is a good way to forward my worthless career.”
If I was a celebrity I would refuse to go on the Simpsons.
Oh yeah, you think, that is easy to say, but you would if you really had the chance.

Nah… If the simpsons asked you to come to the magical land of springfield you would say yes…
No doubt about it.

Just imagine yourself yellow!

You can be as rich and as powerfull as you'd want to be but still being yellow is only possible in the simpsons.

I could just drink till my liver packed up.
That would probably be less unpleasent.

Yeah, that's a way to turn yellow too I suppose…

I think I'm gonna try that!

I once had glandula fever and was in fact yellow.
The Simpsons Movie was worse.

Glandula fevour goes away after a while. That horrible movie will be around forever!

I once had a magic marker and turned yellow… that went away after a while too.
Then I bought a blue marker and I was a smurf for a while…

Hmmmm… good times!

The Simpsons has really fallen apart over the years.

Remember that early episode where Bart meets Jay North from the Dennis the Menace show circa 1960? He's sitting at a booth in some sort of “con” event. He says to Bart “I was America's bad boy”, and Bart just sorta laughs at him?

THAT IS BART RIGHT NOW!!!! A pathetic has-been sitting at a booth waiting to sign autographs! This show hasn't been cutting-edge in 15 years! The movie would have been far more relevant in the mid 90s then it was in 2007. It just seemed to be a last ditch effort to prop up a show that has just been taking up space on sunday nights.

That's an awesome image.
The washed up, ageing Bart, hawking his fame for a few more dollars.
It's pretty close to spot on!

Meh,dont worry,fact that the Simpsons are jumping the shark since approximetly season 11 isn't really a taboo topic anymore.
I completly agree on your impression you got from the terribly overhyped movie,but when you mentioned that the writers were saving their best jokes for the movie is just…wow(Naked Bart on the skateborad and Eski-Moes pun was the best material they had?)
I cant bear myself to watch the Simpsons anymore.Each episode is just so terribly predictable and formulatic.Not to mention how the characters became one dimensional and irritating(and yes,yes,the way they made Homer dumber than rock is their biggest sin).And what happened to Lisa?She used to be above inteligent kid who would somethimes question things,but she was still a kid who played with Barbies and watched cartoons.Now she is just a puppet who serves to express writers half baked liberal toughts.It's not cute anymore.

Typical Simpsons episode:
1.Main Homer plot-Homer gets fired for the milionth time,rides his car and radio plays some 80s music,Homer gets a seziour while singing,then remembers to buy donuts“Mmmm donuts” but along the way he finds:suitcase with money/lottery ticket/opportunity for a profitable,but illegal job-anything moraly tempting.
He wants better life for his family,goes along with it but hides it from them,then he screws up,but Marge forgives him cause she is just a needy dormat with no ambition or cofnfidence to make a better life for her and the kids.
2.Subplot with other family members:
-Marge finds yet another secret talent that can make her money or a rich handsom guy who wants to marry her and also provide a better life.But no,she loves her brain damaged selfish jerk too much
-Bart learns another lesson how it isn't nice to make pranks on people,but seems to forgot in another episode
-Lisa fights for her liberal toughts,but fails then relaises that she simply cant change the world

LOL,I have no idea why am I getting so overanalytical with the Simpsons =P
Gotta admit,it's fun
Pardon my spelling,I'm Croatian(the ones with divine seashores,truffels and ties)

I am going to start using “pardon me, I'm Croatian” as the excuse every time I screw up from now on. That is such a genius line.
Don't worry about the spelling, your “typical episode” was spot on, and reading it gave me much more entertainment and laughs than Simpsons has in a long while!

In a weird way, the characters have become more cartoony than when they were first releases. When was the last time Homer kissed Marge and told his family how important they were to him, even though they aren't perfect, compared to more recent ones where he's more likely to chloroform the lot of them for shits and giggles.

You know what one of the problems was? Family Guy. Once Family Guy stopped trying to be a near identical show to the Simpsons and developed the cut away humour and more random plots, it got a lot more popular. The Simpsons started getting wackier humour to compensate and now both of them have hit the sticky bottom of shit canyon.

Confused soul, you make an interesting case there.
Simpsons has certainly lost track of the characters, relations and (dare I say it?) the heart that made it so good.

Copying Family Guy's outrageous tactics could well be a factor.
But yeah, now Family Guy blows as well!

I thought Family Guy was really funny (if a little dumb). Then I saw one episode from the seventh/eighth season where Brian tries to have sex with an atheist girl. I've never had so much hatred and bile form for a series based on a single 20 minute showing.

I don't care much for Family Guy,I admit,I got a few laughs but not nearly as much as the writers wanted me to have.And I don't get most of the pop-cultural refrences,and humor conains 90% of those…so yeah
But atleast the FG writers are aware their show is hit and miss crap,and they are not trying to hide it.
And the Simpsons are trying to hide the mean-spiritedness with 10 second “family moments” in the end of the episodes to remind us we should care and relate to them.

More so then the loss of jokes, the loss of heart has killed Simpsons.
Plague Doctor is right in his summation of its “mean-spiritedness”.
I used to cheer for Homer to get back with Marge. Now he seems so crazy, unstable and selfish, he comes across as down right abusive.
Dont try and tell me Homer has never hit her. That crazy yellow bastard is capable of it!

I will admit that Simpsons has loss it's shine for a good, long while now. It's only still on FOX now out of sympathy, and for the fans it still churns out each night. But I'm gonna have to say that at some point, they're just gonna give the whole ‘Animation Domination’ block to Seth MacFarlane. I can almost bet on it.

Kind of a shame though that it's a choice between Seth's three shows, one aging show from the 90's decade, and that's it. I'd pay to see Futurama or The PJ's back again or something.

Heck, the Tick cartoon!

Family Guy and South Park have all over stayed their welcome and become painfully tired.
American Dad was never welcome in the first place! That show managed to be dated and played out before the end of its first opening credits.

And the Cleavland Show?

Seriously?

Do I even need to say anymore?

The Tick would be appropriate as the show to come back, as it would feel like a super hero swooping in to save us frm the animated comedy death trap we are all falling into.

Macfarlane only had one good idea ever, Family Guy. Every time he releases a new show such as American Dad or the Cleveland Show that fact becomes painfully obvious. There's nothing new to these shows. It's Peter Griffin and family rehashed as some other characters.

As fer the Simpsons: There's an old saying in the entertainment biz, “Always leave em asking for more”. The Simpsons is apparently trying to get people to beg them to stop.