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[SpaceWolf]

"If every episode of The Simpsons is a celebration, which we try to make it, then the movie is like a big celebration. It's a way of honoring the animators, allowing them to really strut their stuff and really go as far as they can with the art of the handwritten gesture. It's a way of honoring the writers, because we were able to get the best all-star writers of The Simpsons and write our hearts out, and it's a way of honoring all the great actors."
— Matt Groening.

The Simpsons Movie is a weird one. It's a film that exists...but for some reason I keep forgetting it exists. Maybe because deep down, I don't really want to remember it.

As an absolutely colossal Simpsons fan around the time the film was being worked on (like most sane people), I remember feverishly going through film magazines, reading interviews given by the writers talking about how the script for The Simpsons movie had been worked on for close to five years. The best and brightest writers from the show's past and present had returned by the dozens to work on it...with each and every joke in the movie being polished to a fine shine in anticipation for release

But then the film came out. And in all honesty, it struck me as a bit rubbish. The story was completely aimless and forgettable...and worse, I didn't even really find the film that funny. It was like a below average modern Simpsons episode. Where was the classic Simpsons humor? Where was the heart? Why did so much of the film revolve around Homer acting like such a momentous prick all the time, making the whole thing feel so mean spirited?

Looking back on it now, the whole thing seemed rather surreal...

Remember that the villain eventually chosen to star in the movie was not iconic Simpsons villains Mr Burns or Sideshow Bob, but instead the forgettable head of an environmental agency played by Albert Brooks? What was that about?

Remember when the President of the United States in the film was Arnold Schwarzenegger, not Rainer Wolfcastle, despite the fact that the whole point of that character was that he was Springfield's version of Arnold Schwarzenegger?

Remember when there was a gag in the film that revolved around showing Bart Simpson's penis?

Maybe this is just me, though. Surprisingly, I checked online today to see the film mostly got pretty good reviews (89% on Rotten Tomatoes!). Yet the film doesn't seem to have made much of a cultural impression, even among die-hard Simpsons fans.

So what say you, GAF? Does the film have it merits? Is it an under-appreciated classic up there with the very best Simpsons episodes? Or does The Simpsons Movie deserve to be forgotten after all?

 

[SamVimes]

It's trash. Hoping it would be better than that was a little naive since the show was already trash for a long while at the time.

 

[6.8]

I'm a huge classic/real the Simpsons fan and I haven't watched it yet. I really don't trust that series anymore. Why bother tarnishing it even more!?

 

[Sir_Crocodile]

It wasn't amazing. Shame there was no Conan O'Brien, Sam Smith or Brad Bird.

 

[A Fish Aficionado]

20 years too late.

 

[PeakPointMatrix]

Or remember how Milhouse was supposed to be Lisa's love interest after 17 years of build-up, but a test screening didn't respond to it, so it was changed to some random european kid.

I'll also never understand how Spiderpig became so popular. People were almost choking of laughter when I saw it.

I too remember hotly anticipating the film as a huge Simpsons fan, but came away disappointed at how unfocused and scatterbrained the story was. It had a few good laughs though, but not much else.

 

[Sojgat]

Unfunny garbage. Spider-Pig...

20 years too late.

Pretty much.

 

[TheChewyWaffles]

No, I just didn't remember they made it.

 

[samn]

I just try and pretend nothing Simpsons after season 9 was ever made.

 

[munchie64]

20 years too late.

So you wanted it to come out before the show existed?

 

[glaurung]

Approximately 3 jokes in what can only be described as a stretched mediocre episode of the series.

I glance over the disc in my blu-ray collection every time I open that drawer.

 

[maquiladora]

Spider pig.

That's all I can remember.

 

[Ushojax]

I still can't believe they actually showed Bart's penis. That was a level of humour that I never thought they would stoop to.

 

[Dishwalla]

It's not really that good of a movie. It was serviceable, but it could've and should've been so much better.

 

[liquidtmd]

It wasn't great, but as someone who hasn't been a religious watcher in the last 15 years, it wasn't a bad night at the cinema if I recall when I first saw it.

My daughter enjoys it and by my own low expectations it acquitted itself OK. OP makes some good points in terms of some of its choices though, head of the EPA and Schwarznegger being odd picks

 

[Joni]

Remember that the villain eventually chosen to star in the movie was not iconic Simpsons villains Mr Burns or Sideshow Bob, but instead the forgettable head of an environmental agency played by Albert Brooks? What was that about?

They picked one of their very best guest actors for the spot. They were very well right in skipping Burns or Bob, who have been terrible villains. They suck at being villains, they fail every time. The main problem is they replaced Hank Scorpio with Russ Cargill when they originally wanted to Scorpio.

 

[A Fish Aficionado]

So you wanted it to come out before the show existed?

I just realized the math. Maybe 10 years.
I thought this came out very recently.
This movie was released in 2007.

 

[munchie64]

I just realized the math. Maybe 10 years.
I thought this came out very recently.

It is pretty crazy that it came out 9 years ago.

 

[BKSmash]

Great movie, I remember watching it on opening day and really loving it.

 

[dh4niel]

I remember reading that they put their best writers on the film, which was why the show took a massive dive in story quality.

 

[Sojgat]

I just realized the math. Maybe 10 years.
I thought this came out very recently.
This movie was released in 2007.

It was a sketch on the Ullman show for years beforehand, so technically 20 years could work out. The spirit of what you said is correct though, the movie came way too late.

 

[NHarmonic.]

They picked one of their very best guest actors for the spot. They were very well right in skipping Burns or Bob, who have been terrible villains. They suck at being villains, they fail every time. The main problem is they replaced Hank Scorpio with Russ Cargill when they originally wanted to Scorpio.

Scorpio would've been amazing.

 

[ghostjoke]

I wish I could forget it.

 

[Langdon Alger]

It was pretty bad.

 

[pbayne]

Yep fell well below what i expected it to be.

It had a decent first 20 minutes or so but everything after that is just meh.

 

[tkscz]

I can remember some things about the movie, mainly the big titty lady, rock and a hard place, EPA! and Spider-pig. Everything was a bit of a jumble. I liked the movie, but it really did just feel like a long episode of the Simpsons.

However, I felt Homer's idiocy was ramped up too high in the movie. He's dumb but wow the mistake he made here he doesn't in the show. Just, really dumb shit.

 

[DXB-KNIGHT]

GAF keep using this picture so I keep remembering it.

 

[Sojgat]

Yep fell well below what i expected it to be.

It had a decent first 20 minutes or so but everything after that is just meh.

I remember they went to a Green Day concert at the start and I was like "Green Day? Seriously?"

And then the rest was basically white noise.

 

[Moff]

I loved the TV show but I have stopped watching it somewhere around season 10.
When the movie was released most people seemed to think it was like a good old episode, i watched it and thought it was alright.
So I am kinda surprised by the reactions here, are the new episodes generally better than the movie?

 

[MrBadger]

I thought it was funny, even if a lot of the humour felt like it was pandering to what was funny at the time. Its biggest crime was not having Hank Scorpio as the villain

I would say it's better than your average modern Simpsons episode by a margin, though.

 

[Ladekabel]

I do remember that it exists. I like it. It's not great but serviceable if I want to watch something enjoyable.

Never got Spider Pig though.

 

[poipoipoi9]

Back in 2007 I was absolutely hyped up for the film and ended up really liking it.

Although I recently rewatched it and while it didn't have the charm of old-school Simpsons, (plenty of the humour like Homer hitting his eye with his hammer felt rather difficult to watch and doesn't have the same tone to it as classic Simpsons, being more crude and mean), it was still a fairly enjoyable film, and I ended up liking it more than Seasons 17 and 18.

 

[Daria Morgendorffer]

I remember seein it in the cinema and it not being very funny, my friends who I went with seemed to enjoy it though, so I guess it's not toally garbage, just not what I was looking for in a Simpsons Movie

 

[Madness]

It had its moments but it also had the same kind of jokes that are representative of the show currently, and it really took away from the movie. It was as if every character was a caricature of themselves, trying too hard to the the most 'Homer' version of Homer etc.

Stupidest part was President Arnold Schwarzenegger as some kind of dumb anti-Republican joke, but he was played by Rainier Wolfcastle, a character created solely to be the Arnold of the Simpsons universe. It's was just lazy and was there just to set up forgettable jokes. Trailers ruined things like Spiderpig etc. I have the Blu-ray, but it just reminds me that I don't like and will never like modern Simpsons.

 

[SomedayTheFire]

I saw it in the cinema a few times. it was awful.

 

[Diprosalic]

[
As an absolute colossal Simpsons fan around the time the film was being worked on (like most sane people)

the movie came out in 2007, by that time the Simpsons have sucked for 11 years.
so no, no sane person was still a huge fan of the Simpsons.

 

[Strax]

Fantastic movie, best animated movie the year it came out.

 

[Coolluck]

I remember it. I remember watching it two times and liking it both times. I also remember that two is probably enough. It probably won't hold up if I went back to it now. I can't believe it's almost 9 years old. I do want to play that 360 game of it though.

 

[Roberto Larcos]

I really enjoyed it, and end up watching it when it appears on TV. It had the feel-good factor that Simpsons has since maybe lost, and the jokes largely hit the spot. Of course Spider-pig isn't as funny in 2016 as it was in 2007 - 2007 was the year of Spider-Man 3, the third Spider-Man high-budget feature film in 5 years. It was overplayed. That was the joke.

God damn GAF, I swear sometimes you just hate for the sake of hate. Re-watch it if you're on the fence, it holds up.

 

[CadetMahoney]

the movie came out in 2007, by that time the Simpsons have sucked for 11 years.

I loled at this more than I should have.

 

[Fantastapotamus]

The movie was alright. For a movie. About the Simpsons. In 2007.
I don't have positive or negative memories. There was a funny joke but I don't remember it.

 

[Boney]

Like most movies about (animated) tv shows, it ends up being drawn out, unfunny and unnecessarily over dramatic. And this movie doesn't even have the privilege of having a good episode on tv for the past 15 years.

Just a cash grabbing horrible farce of a movie.

 

[slider]

It wasn't great but it wasn't terrible. I think I'm like a lot of folk in that I wanted it to be better than it was and that's skewed my perception/rating of it.

 

[Shuggananas]

It was kinda decent. Don't want to rewatch it though.

 

[Dishwalla]

I remember they went to a Green Day concert at the start and I was like "Green Day? Seriously?"

And then the rest was basically white noise.

Green Day was arguably at their peak of popularity at the time, still riding the American Idiot wave. I don't even think they were ever as popular in the 1990's as they were in the 2005-2008 time frame.

I think their inclusion in the movie makes sense for the time it was made.

 

[grandjedi6]

It was a good movie that turned out better than it had any right being. They basically had the impossible task of making a Simpsons movie, way after the series quality dipped too boot, yet managed to make a rather decent & memorable affair. It's rather like the Peanuts movie that just came out.

People are quick to hate it, but we were never going to get a better movie than that, even during the series heyday.

 

[ahoyhoy]

Remember when the President of the United States in the film was Arnold Schwarzenegger, not Rainer Wolfcastle, despite the fact that the whole point of that character was that he was Springfield's version of Arnold Schwarzenegger?

This was a dead giveaway for me that they weren't aiming at the die-hard fans when they made this movie. They weren't even aiming at the regular show watcher that might have seen most episodes at least once. They were aiming at the casual watcher who might have seen a dozen or so episodes and just thought it would be a fun way to offload their kids for 2 hours during the summer.

It's like, with this gag, they knew that casual watchers probably wouldn't remember any of the dozens of Wolfcastle gags, and would probably be confused when some guy named "Rainer Wolfcastle" who looks and sounds an awful lot like Schwarzenegger would be POTUS, so they changed his name tag at the last minute to appeal to the lowest common demoniator.

The whole movie was just a cash grab, nothing more.

 

[pauljeremiah]

I think the main issue with the film is that they played it way too safe. When I listened to the commentary track people like Al Jean kept saying we were going to do this, but decided to put in a more tamer version.

For example Homer hitting all the signs as he is about to dump the silo. In the original animatic there was a sign that said "Bastards!!!" Yet when the scene was finished they has changed it to something else.

Also I think I remember this correctly when someone on the commentary said that they had to make the film for people who hadn't seen The Simpsons as they were afraid it would effect its Box Office returns. Which I think is the worse mindset to making a film.

Edit:

We have spent some many seasons by this time exploring Springfield and all the characters who dwell within it, you can argue that the city is just as iconic as the family. So why take them out of there? Surely they could have come up with a story set within the city and with the characters we know instead of moving them to Alaska and have a new character be the antagonist. Don't get me wrong, if they want to have Albert Brooks as the villain then bring back Hank Scorpio.

 

[Skellig Gra]

To me the real movie was "The Simpsons Game". Lots of great humor in that.

 

[Dishwalla]

I think the main issue with the film is that they played it way too safe. When I listened to the commentary track people like Al Jean kept saying we were going to do this, but decided to put in a more tamer version.

For example Homer hitting all the signs as he is about to dump the silo. In the original animatic there was a sign that said "Bastards!!!" Yet when the scene was finished they has changed it to something else.

Also I think I remember this correctly when someone on the commentary said that they had to make the film for people who hadn't seen The Simpsons as they were afraid it would effect its Box Office returns. Which I think is the worse mindset to making a film.

The most obvious one was the sight gag where Moe's is(temporarily) next to the church and the drunks at the bar run to the church and the churchgoers run to the bar, but they stuck a gigantic, ugly ass sign atop the bar that says "MOE'S BAR", because they were afraid some people wouldn't get the joke.

The problem with this was why put any of the little callbacks to the show in the movie that fans will immediately recognize if they were that afraid of alienating casual viewers? Like, why have Moe call Marge "Midge", wouldn't that be just as confusing to someone who isn't a regular viewer? I know it would be if I had watched the film without having any prior knowledge of the series.