Review of The Simpsons Movie (2007) by William C — 04 Aug 2015

The Simpsons, a classic family of TV, and now they have finally taken to the big screen, and in good fashion. With the kind of jokes that the Simpsons seemingly had lost, this mixes good old fun with overall stupidity to make a comedy well worth your time. Even the whole town of Springfield come out to salute the show in style, every crazy thing that happens seemingly normal, and is testament to the wacky ideas that the creators put out there.

The story is fun, over the top but fun and when Homer is bad, well bad things happen. The town of Springfield has a few new additions to it than what we are used to(and that's not to mention the unique style of animation this movie uses), yes the town seems in disarray at first but the story has a way of throwing us a few curve balls here and there, and keeps us glued to the screen from start to finish.

The well known voices are of course in this movie, we even get a cameo that actually is fairly funny as well. Dan Castellaneta as characters such as Homer, Barney and Krusty the Clown is a great voice to use, coupled with Bart's voice done by Nancy Cartwright(plus Ralph, Todd Flanders and Nelson), Julie Kavner as Marge and Yeardley Smith as Lisa, this is one voice cast that is really quite something, oh and they also throw in Hank Azaria, Harry Shearer and Albert Brooks to complete the boiling pot that is The Simpsons Movie.

David Silverman is the director and he does a good job, he seems to be able to work with the script well but also add in a few moves of his own. On that point the script, and it has a seemingly endless list of names to it so I'm just going to say it is all good and fine and really along with the direction forms a nice basis for the humour of this movie. Some will go along and say this is one silly movie and to be fair, it kind of is, but it's silly where you laugh and if anything it's like making a silly thing, but putting brains behind it.

I know people who don't like the Simpsons and maybe even fans too felt this was a bad idea, stick to TV right. Well I think this was a great choice to do, in fact I would even go so far as to say this had brought new life and maybe even new fans to the Simpsons. It all comes down to the originality of the plot(disregarding Stephen King) and the freshness of the jokes, it just feels like this new wave has come over the creators and suddenly the writers are on fire again once more.

I think the movie also points out some good points, of course most of the rational points are shut down by Homer but in any case they show faults in society today. The environment is so close to Lisa's heart and yet the town seem hell bent on destroying it, and then there's the president who's quick picking of his options show's a humorous look at the government and their policies in the world. Of course don't look into it that much, this is just a comedy after all but the satirical take's are pretty nicely done and not that obvious either.

All in all this makes me feel glad, I am a Simpsons fan and I watched this as if I wasn't, but even that couldn't stop me liking this as a film. I think it's the kind of movie you can watch again, yes OK maybe it won't necessarily be one of your all time favourites but in any case you may want to revisit this little yarn in the future, and have a few chuckles also.