The Simpsons Movie
Directed by David Silverman
Starring the voices of Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright, Yeardly Smith, Harry Shearer, Hank Azaria, A. Brooks, Green Day, and Tom Hanks.
Backstory
Wow. A Simpsons movie has been rumored ever since…well, at least season 3. And now, this 18-year old cornerstone of pop culture finally gets the big screen treatment. I went into the film kind of wary. The popular belief is that, when you do a movie version of a TV show, you’ve got to take it to “the next level.” But I wasn’t getting that vibe from the trailers. Would the movie take it to “the next level?”
Plot
The plot is kind of hard to explain, but I’ll do my best. Homer gets a new pet pig and starts dumping all the pig crap into Lake Springfield. Lake Springfield gets so polluted that the Environmental Protection Agency seals the town in a giant dome. But, the Simpsons manage to escape before being lynched, and start over in Alaska. In other character arcs, Bart adopts Ned Flanders as his new father figure, Lisa gets her first boyfriend, and Tom Hanks has a great cameo.
What I Liked
The animation is kicked up a notch, and that’s nice to see. The voice acting is kicked up a notch, too. You can actually hear that the stars of the Simpsons really are trying harder and putting more…acting into it. The nude skateboarding scene. As mentioned above, Tom Hanks’s cameo. And it is just darn funny.
What I Didn’t Like
Sadly, my fears were somewhat confirmed. It doesn’t really kick things up a notch plot-wise or character-wise. I could quite easily see this being broken up into 4 or 5 episodes.
Final Assessment
It’s a wonderfully funny movie, but I was expecting a little bit more.