Now boys, when you meet Jesus, be sure to call him "Mr. Christ"

[vovat]

So, I went with bethje and her Uncle John to see the Simpsons Movie. This is the fourth movie I've seen so far this year, and the second that I've seen on opening day. That doesn't really sound that impressive, but hey, it is for me.

The movie itself was...decent. For an extended episode of the show, it was better than much of the last season. For the big blockbuster that they've been working on for a few years and refused to even start making for many more years before that because they wanted to be sure they did it right...well, I'm not sure it really lived up to its potential. I do think the writers enjoyed the opportunity to do a Big Story, especially with all the complaining they do on the DVD commentaries about how Fox has cut time from the show to allow for more commercials. And it did hold together as one story, with some focus on every character, including a surprising amount of Maggie. Still, I'm not going to lie; it was largely Homer-centric. They worked in a good number of supporting characters as well, including a few less frequently appearing ones in non-speaking roles (Gabbo and Stampy are the two that came to mind), although there were a few who seemed conspicuously absent. You'd kind of think they would have worked in Kang and Kodos somehow, although it's probably better they didn't. I also found it interesting that they used so few guest voices. Maybe after so many years of the show emphasizing big-name celebrity appearances, they wanted the movie to be different. Or maybe they just wasted their budget on the computer-enhanced animation. Whatever. {g} Even as far as frequently recurring guest voices go, they used Albert Brooks and Joe Mantegna, but not, say, Jon Lovitz, Alex Rocco, or Kelsey Grammer. (The IMDB listing actually included Kelsey in the cast list, but I figured there was a good chance they were guessing; it's hardly the best source for information on films that are still in production. Besides, since Sideshow Bob was living in Italy the last time we saw him, it probably would have been difficult to work him into the plot.) Actually, I think the oddest omission was Frank Welker, who's usually the go-to guy for animal voices. I believe it was Dan Castellaneta who voiced Santa's Little Helper, and Tress MacNeill as the pig.

The stuff with Arnold Schwarzenegger as President was kind of weird. That's not to say it wasn't funny, but the President on the show has previously always been the same as the one in real life. Did they think Schwarzenegger jokes would hold up better than Bush jokes? That, however, is not an issue of quality, but rather of continuity. And there are several other nerdlinger criticisms that I can give in that respect, like, "Why would the dome be right in the Simpsons' backyard? They don't live on the edge of town" or "How could Homer and Marge have a wedding video when they were married by themselves at a casino chapel?", but no more than in just about any given episode of the show.

This review ended up being a lot longer than I had originally intended, so I guess I'll wrap it up now. Would I recommend the movie? I don't think I need to. I'm sure anyone who still likes the show will watch it regardless. But if you've given up on the show and were hoping the movie might be a return to the classic style, you might want to wait for the video, unless the thrill of seeing TV cartoon characters on the big screen is enough of an attraction for you (and, admittedly, that WAS pretty cool).

What wasn't so cool were the previews. As if the live action Alvin and the Chipmunks didn't look bad enough already, we now know that it includes a joke about eating poop. How wonderful. And the Horton Hears a Who preview made me want Dr. Seuss to rise from the grave just long enough to tell Jim Carrey to stay away from his characters. At least they had the sense to make this one a cartoon, albeit a CGI one. But really, does EVERYTHING from my childhood need to be reworked into a crappy-looking movie?

Comments

[obsessical.livejournal.com]

The anguish I feel for the new alvin and the chipmunks movie can no longer be expressed into words, just angry yelling noises.

My heart aches, adn it makes me very glad i have the original cartoon movie on tape to watch whenever I want :)

[bethje.livejournal.com]

The Chipmunk Adventure is an excellent movie, isn't it?

[vilajunkie.livejournal.com]

I'm glad I haven't seen those previews yet. (I haven't seen the movie either.) What do you make of the upcoming Underdog movie? Even as someone who never watched the show as a kid, I feel they totally ruined anything the cartoon stood for. In fact, was it really that hard to make a 2D cartoon that uses flat color instead of CGI and amazingly-lifelike watercolor cels? I have a sneaky suspicion that sometime soon in the future we'll have "I Love Lucy: The Movie" starring Anne Heche and Ozzie Guillen, with Haley Joel Osment as the teenage Little Ricky.

[bethje.livejournal.com]

I've heard about the Underdog movie, and I think I saw a small clip, but I can't remember anything about it. CGIing up cartoons always bothers me. But with this movie, the thing that gets to me is his voice. My beloved Wally Cox isn't around to do the voice, so I guess it just kind of hurts me that someone else is trying to. Although from the clip I saw, I don't believe they're trying to imitate Wally at all...

[vilajunkie.livejournal.com]

It's not even proper CGI. It's live action with the dogs' mouths being CGI'ed. From what I've seen of the movie, it seems that the writers/directors thought "OK, there's this dog that's a superhero. And his bully/villian is named Riff Raff. Forget the rest of the show; it's from before we were born, so it's not any good. So what do we do to make this dog for modern kids? Poop jokes it is!"

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I've only seen a few episodes of the Underdog cartoon and none of the trailers for the movie, but it definitely seems to follow the tradition of totally ruining the spirit of the original. I think part of the appeal of Jay Ward's cartoons was that they were successful despite fairly crappy drawings and animation. I didn't mind the George of the Jungle movie that much (although they were a little too obsessed with the elephant peeing on things), but then, I never actually watched that cartoon.

I have a sneaky suspicion that sometime soon in the future we'll have "I Love Lucy: The Movie" starring Anne Heche and Ozzie Guillen, with Haley Joel Osment as the teenage Little Ricky.

I wouldn't be too surprised, since it seems like just about every TV show from the sixties to the nineties is being revisited in a movie that's totally different from the actual show.

[vilajunkie.livejournal.com]

I've seen the George of the Jungle cartoons, and the movie was fairly accurate, except for Ursula being a modern New Yorker woman instead of always beings a jungle woman like the original. I think the two George films were created with Tarzan in mind for the first one and Crocodile Dundee ("Hur, hur. He don't know what civilization is!") in mind for the second one.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I didn't see the second George film, but I think the first one was a pretty direct Tarzan parody. That's not to say that the cartoon didn't parody Tarzan (pretty much any guy swinging on vines is a Tarzan reference, after all), but I doubt it made as much of an effort to directly parody the original story. Wasn't it just a year after the first George movie that Disney put out their actual Tarzan animated film? Someone there must have had ape-men on the brain at that point.

[vilajunkie.livejournal.com]

The show didn't seem to parody Tarzan as much, at least as it went on. The major parody of the original Tarzan was the fact that George is a bumbling fool who doesn't even know much about his own jungle. Did Tarzan come out right after? I didn't think of that. And only a few years before George, they made a live-action version of The Jungle Book, and a few years after Tarzan they made The Jungle Book II and Tarzan II.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, obviously Disney enjoyed stories about people growing up in the jungle. And The Jungle Book is a similar story, although it was set in India and written about twenty years earlier. I actually have cheap copies of both The Jungle Book and Tarzan of the Apes on my bookshelf, but I haven't gotten around to reading either one.

[vilajunkie.livejournal.com]

From what I've read about The Jungle Book series, it's much darker than the Disney film. Mowgli learned how to properly mourn and bury his wolf-father at a very early age, for example.