By Curt Schleier

THE SIMPSONS TV show has been on the air for almost two decades.  If you stop to think about it, that’s longer than many of you have been around.  What it’s done that you probably haven’t is maintain consistently high quality for all those years.  Sure, there have been a couple of clunker episodes, but virtually every week the show is funny.  Often it’s message funny.  Sometimes it’s wickedly funny.  Occasionally it’s stupid funny.  But there are very few TV series that so regularly pack in so many deep belly laughs in a half hour – and none that have done it so well for so long.

It is quite frankly why I (and I presume at least some of you) approached THE SIMPSONS MOVIE with a touch of trepidation.  After more than 400 episodes, over 200 hours, was there anything left to say?  And, if there was, was it worth stretching it out to 87 minutes?  Finally there is the question posed by Homer Simpson himself: what knucklehead would pay to get into see something that they get ever week at home?


The answer of course to the last question is the easiest: me and you and hundreds of thousands of other knuckleheads who can’t get enough of the original episodes that we spend countless hours watching the repeats in syndication.  (Granted, you’re more a knucklehead than I am, since I got in to see the film free. But let’s not quibble over degrees of knuckleheadedness!)

To move onto the questions: is there anything new to say?  Sort of.  There is some new material, views of certain cast members (i.e. Bart) we haven’t seen before.  And what isn’t new is said in a refreshingly new way.  Finally, does it work stretched out to almost four times the length of a typical show (without commercials)?  Yes it does.  It works very well.

I’m not going to spoil the movie for those of you who haven’t seen it. But in broad outlines, Homer does something stupid perhaps a little worse than stupid things he’s done in the past: He creates an ecological disaster involving his swine.  It leaves President Schwarzenegger – yes Arnold is President -- with little choice but to install a massive dome over Springfield, isolating it and its residents from the rest of the world.

Unlike the television version, there is also a little nudity – as young Bart’s wee-wee… Again, why spoil it for you?  Some things are better left as surprises. Also, when Bart is completely dressed, he has parenting issues.  He needs a father figure, and isn’t sure that Homer’s the one.


Amid the turmoil, Lisa finds romance.   And Marge, after giving Homer just enough rope to hang himself, shows him who the boss is.

Good news, too, is that some of the special features are indeed special.  The series of trailers that promoted the film in the months before it was released are cute.  And the deleted scenes show how much care the creatives took with the film.  They are often as funny or funnier that the scenes that made it.  Clearly, this wasn’t some quickly slapped together, throw-away project, but something that took all the years the advance publicity said it did.