VauxhallVelcraux

A. O. Scott had it pretty much dead-on in the Times: it's as good--and little better--than a very good episode. Not quite a "Treehouse of Horror" or a "22 Short Films About Springfield" (which Scott mislabels as "32," thinking of Glenn Gould) or the one where Homer eats the five-alarm chili and needs to find his spirit guide, a coyote voiced by Johnny Cash who says one of the best lines in the whole series, "I'm just your memory, Homer. I can't provide you any new information." Let alone my three personal non-Sideshow Bob favorites, the one where Bleeding Gums Murphy dies, the one with the Stonecutters and the casino episode with Marge's gambling problem.

There was nothing like that. Other than seeing Bart's dick, there was nothing especially memorable about the film, certainly not on a catchphrase or character development level. I also share Scott's complete disappointment that Patty and Selma weren't in it at all. The animation was pretty rad, with the helicopters depositing the dome and the interior of the NSA standing out as particularly textured.

I'm not arguing that the film was an exercise in pure cashing-in, but rather pack it with visual rewards to lifelong fans with good observation skills or who've watched dinnertime reruns for more than a decade, the movie was slanted suspiciously heavily towards themes and characters from the earliest days, from the height of Bart merch and before the show really hit its mid-to-late '90s peak. Thank Christ there weren't a million guest voices, at least.

The skateboarding scene, Flanders as a do-gooder neighbor rather than an uber-Christian, the inclusion in crowd scenes of season one figures as stripper Princess Jasmine or Barney's Bowl-a-Rama, Maggie's prominence (and, if you stuck around through the credits, her 'first word,' which was already 'dada' in the episode that shows her birth) -- it all adds up to creative control being turned over to marketing types who don't actually watch the show but whose memories reach back to the marketing bonanza of 1991. In essence, it's as if people who wanted to reproduce the 'success' of the Simpsons when it was a runaway phenomenon guided the entire process, and the writers and animators who hammered out an insane quantity of satire before the Simpsons devolved into a vehicle for celebs to play themselves. Other than almost-too-easy references to "the four states that border Springfield," the film should have taken the show's total disrespect for continuity further, rather than cramming in hallmarks of the 'glory days' (from the perspective of a network executive keen on profit). No "Simpsons" fan wants to admit it, but the show isn't actually a ratings gold mine. It was the 56th most watched show in 2005-2006, tied with the ignominious "America's Funniest Home Videos." So we have this weird result where the movie catered unnecessarily to the most philistine taste, to the people who grind out shit like this or stuff "Ay Caramba!" into Katie Couric's mouth when the Bart float bobs down 5th Avenue in the Macy's Parade.

So, it was funny. Hillary as VP under Scratchy is funny. Albert Brooks is always funny. The drunks running into church when the God-people run into the bar was very, very funny. But it should have been made eight or ten years ago, because waiting this long forced it into a time warp where it feels like it was made sixteen years ago. And why they never look into who lives next door, on the side that isn't the Flanders', is beyond me.