Movie Review: The Simpson's Movie

Saturday morning cartoons used to be the staple entertainment for a large percentage of the country's youth...there was a time when kids would jump out of bed early on Saturday to watch a plethora of classics such as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Tom & Jerry. What happened to that? Well, those kids grew up. Now let's forget those innocent escapades and move on to the world of raunchy humor, political statements, and all manner of niceties for the "more mature" viewer (I prefer to say older, as mature usually doesn't come into play). At the forefront of these more "adult" cartoons: The Simpson's.

If you've ever watched the series you're familiar with this kooky "all-american" animated family consisting of the fun-loving (and donut-loving) but generally useless Homer, his doting wife Marge, brainiac daughter Lisa, troublemaker son Bart and baby Maggie (who's pretty much just there most of the time). Throughout the series we've seen this family in all manner of Homer-induced trouble and entertaining interaction with the eclectic members of the town of Springfield (bordered by the beautiful states of Ohio, Nevada, Maine and Kentucky).

Following Grandpa's "senior moment" of prophecy during church Bart is in trouble for public nudity for taking up his father's dare and while Homer does a less-than-fatherly job of making him feel better Homer spots a pig being used in one of Krusty the Clown's commercials and decides to bring him home to save him from being made into a pork sandwich.

Meanwhile Lisa has been throwing her efforts into raising awareness about the abysmal conditions in Lake Springfield and is finding out just how much people don't care about the environment...but some underhanded tactics make the townspeople listen anyway. Lake Springfield is clean, but thanks to Homer and his pet pig it will soon be even worse than before, triggering a response from the EPA that could result in the horrible deaths of the entire town. Springfield's fate lies in Homer's hands...God help them.

I've had a lot of friends comment that I'm the "young one" in the relationship, but my significant other habitually belies that observation with his avid love of everything comedically immature including some of his favorite shows...The Simpson's, Family Guy, American Dad, and the list goes on.

I confess that I have on occasion enjoyed The Simpson's but I'm definitely not as big of a fan as my other half and get annoyed quickly if he watches it too much. That said, I was surprised at how well The Simpson's Movie turned out...it's pretty hard to tell if a series made up of half-hour episodes that are often completely unrelated to each other is going to be good or not and I was opting for not.

If you've never seen The Simpson's series on TV you'll still be able to catch on to this movie just fine even if you won't fully understand some of the character quirks and "givens" from the series (such as Millhouse's insatiable crush on Lisa that explains his murderous thoughts about a new kid in town) but still easy enough to enjoy for the story's merit alone if you appreciate a certain degree of absurdity and general elements of slapstick comedy...and yes, there is a brief moment of nudity.

The voice talents in this series never really stood out to me...until I learned that there are only about eight people that do the voices of all the many characters. As with the series, the movie also has a couple of guest voices such as Tom Hanks and the members of Green Day.

Overall I felt the movie was pretty well done and definitely good for a few laughs; as is usual for the show the movie doesn't really have a lot to say and isn't really appropriate for kids...especially since the movie doesn't have the language restrictions that the series does being on public television (or the nudity restrictions)...but adults with an immature side (come on people, we all know we have one) may just catch themselves enjoying this movie.