Director: David Silverman
Cast: Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright, Yeardley Smith
Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure.
Did I Like It: I’ve been thinking a lot about the denizens of Springfield lately. It doesn’t matter why. With any luck, you might see the connective tissue one day. My re-watch of the series has burst past the eighteenth season, and so it comes time to take in the movie again.
There’s a lot of hoary cliches that can be thrown around about how The Simpsons has aged poorly*, that even those criticisms have aged poorly themselves. I remember the movie being a step up from the episodes of the era. Ultimately, I think it’s decidedly of its era. There’s the politics which are resoundingly of the Bush era and have aged, even if the conservative celebrity becoming a willfully ignorant President of the United States is less funny “ha ha” and more funny “uh oh”, and, oddly unfair to Arnold Schwarzenegger, as it turns out.
But it’s also reflective of the show at the time as well. Episodes past the “Who Shot Mr. Burns?” imbroglio aren’t really comedic stories as much as wanderings from unrelated plot point to unrelated plot point in hopes that the clock runs out before anyone notices. It’s funny. Frequently quite funny, but it’s no wonder that every conceivable comedic story has already been touched on by The Simpsons, as they manage to go through three or four in twenty-two minutes, and manage to go through three times as much in a feature.
I can’t help but note that almost as much time has passed since the release of this movie as have between the show’s premiere in 1989 and the release of the movie itself. We’re all growing old. We’re all going to die one day. On the Sunday following our annihilation, there will be a new episode of The Simpsons waiting for the survivors. I fear what the episodes are like now. I really fear what the sequel might be if it is going to take this long.
But, seriously. Are we supposed to believe the Simpsons-verse has both a Rainier Wolfcastle and an Arnold Schwarzenegger? The Simpsons wiki seems to think they might be brothers, but it doesn’t look like there’s anything to back that up.
*Indeed, the best things to come from the property in the last twenty years aren’t even traditional animated material at all, but instead The Simpsons Pinball Party and Hit and Run.