Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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38 of 52 people found the following review helpful:
Please get that song outta my head!!!!!!!, August 22, 2007
Spiderpig, Spiderpig,
Does whatever a spiderpig does
Can he swing from a web?
No he can't, he's a pig.
Look out! He is a Spiderpig!
If there are any kids in your neighborhood, you already know this little song by heart, and if not, let me warn you that once you hear it, it's stuck in your head FOREVER. Cockroaches may become extinct, Pampers may degrade into mulch, Paris Hilton may be forgotten, but this tune will live on.
The movie contains the normal Simpsons type violence, cartoon nudity and some jokes that will go over the heads of younger kids, but I've seen seven and eight year olds cracking up with laughter anyway - and yes, singing the Spiderpig song over and over again.
In a nutshell, the good folk of Springfield (except Lisa and a new kid in town named Colin) care diddlysquat about the environment and as a result of careless dumping of waste materials, Lake Springfield becomes a toxic bog. A vision predicting certain disaster is ignored by all but Marge, and the pollution continues.
Homer meanwhile adopts a pig from a Krusty Burger commercial, and when the pig becomes a family member, Bart starts looking for a new father figure. Pigs however will be pigs, and the silo that Homer has been using for manure collection quickly starts overflowing. The problems then really get started when Homer is forced to get rid of the stinky stuff, and the Environmental Protection Agency moves in to take care of the situation, albeit with the not-quite-carefully considered approval of President Schwarzenegger.
Draconian measures soon become desperate measures, and of course it's up to The Simpsons to save the town, even though they have become public enemies numbers one through five.
Essentially an episode stretched into a movie covering family relationships, religion, politics, environmental issues and of course Spiderpig, this one is not only for Simpsons fans, but for lovers of cartoons, slapstick humor and satire. Go see this movie for the Simpsons - leave it remembering the pig.
Amanda Richards, August 23, 2007
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11 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
Recaptures the Spirit of the Best Years of the Show, October 29, 2007
"The Simpsons Movie" is, in a word, hilarious.
I had a number of fears when I first heard they were finally bringing the animated television sitcom to the big screen.
Frequently, when a half-hour long sitcom does an hour long "special", the longer format is made up of two episodes strung together. Would "The Simpsons Movie" be simply three episodes strung together to masquerade as a feature length film? Thankfully, it isn't. They have taken a larger theme, the pollution of the environment, and give each of the characters an overall piece of this main story while they deal with problems and situations of their own. Most of these are also connected to the environment. This allows them to tie all of the stories together and to give all of our favorite characters a piece of the pie.
Would the film reflect the quality of the series currently or actually be funny?
The environment? "Well, that sounds awfully "After School Special" you might say. You would be wrong. One of the things I love about the first, oh say, ten years of the series, is how madcap the series was. Big emphasis on `was'. One moment, the family would be doing one activity, lampooning a handful of different pop culture references, then they would be on to another madcap thing, lampooning a whole different set of pop culture references. Better yet, the story connected these moments Now, the story movies from point A to point B with a couple of jokes thrown in.
In "Movie", they use the environment as a framework allowing all of the characters in the family and the entire town of Springfield, to interact and highlight their comic personalities. The story drives the film, allowing the characters to bring their own personalities to the dilemma. This brought back memories of some of my favorite episodes, episodes in which Homer & Marge visit a candy convention and Homer becoming the poster child for sexual perverts everywhere, or Homer deciding he doesn't want to go to church and starting his own religion something God apparently approves of, or Lisa's need for braces driving Homer to become the head of his union and going head to head with Mr. Burns. There are so many classic episodes of "The Simpsons" it would be impossible to list them all. What do these classic episodes have in common? They take no prisoners. One moment, they might be making fun of Hollywood, the next religion, and it all works because they have created a story that can handle wildly divergent ideas. "Movie" follows this formula. Using the environment as an overall theme, they take jabs at religion, celebrity spokespeople, Hollywood, politics and "An Inconvenient Truth".
"Movie" is hilarious and has a lot of laughs packed into its 90 minute running time. But it isn't a laugh a minute. There are a couple of moments when the story takes over and the filmmakers try to make Marge and Homer's relationship dramatic. These moments work, but they cut through the comedy like a knife through butter.
The filmmakers have taken the familiar landscape of Springfield and our favorite television characters and given them a suitable big screen upgrade. They have maintained the largely 2-D look and feel of the series but have given it a larger depth. Some scenes have striking shadows added to give the film a more artistic look. The family travels to a new state and this area is depicted in a beauty that would not have been possible with the constraints of a television schedule or budget.
They have even incorporated the use of CGI. Much like in a Disney film, the animators use CGI to control the crowds or to give the action a little more fluidity in certain scenes. In one scene, the camera tracks through an angry mob and this was done with the aid of CGI. The characters are also given a slightly different appearance. The lines used to draw them appear thicker, giving them a slightly more rounded quality.
"Movie" tries to incorporate all of the characters at some point or another and this gives the entire great voice cast an opportunity to show off their skills. Because this is a feature length film, the story explores the relationships between certain characters more fully and allows the voice actors to show off why they have helped to make the series so memorable for so many years.
The story? The story is really good. But to talk about any of it would be to spoil part of the fun, some of the jokes, some of the surprise. You'll have to see it yourself, to experience all of the fun.
"The Simpsons Movie" is a great summer movie, with a lot of laughs for both adults and kids. It is sure to convert a large group of viewers into fans and reenergize some die-hard fans who have become disappointed with the series.
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5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
How Did The Pig Tracks Get On The Ceiling?, December 18, 2007
Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie original debuted as super-short sorts on the popular TRACEY ULLMAN SHOW in 1987--and proved so popular that they soon graduated to their own series, THE SIMPSON, on Fox. A mixture of zany action and pop culture satire, the show was a huge hit--and some twenty years later is still going strong.
THE SIMPSONS MOVIE finds the family in their usual spate of comic chaos, including Grandpa's prophecy at church and Homer's acquisition of a pet pig. Unfortunately, when Homer dumps a silo full of pig crap into Lake Springfield, rendering it toxic, he attracts the attention of the EPA and makes Grandpa's prophecy come true. Is Springfield domed? Er, doomed?
There's a lot to like about THE SIMPSONS MOVIE. It's well crafted, the characters have lots of off-the-wall bits, and when it scores it scores big. But series fan who complain that the series has lost some steam over the years have a point: although its amusing and clever and lots of fun, The Simpsons just don't have the same bite they did back in the day--and this is as true of the film as it is of the series. It's more akin to the pop culture it mocks than to the satire-sharp show it used to be.
The DVD release, which is available in both full screen and widescreen, comes with several bonuses. The audio tracks are inconsistently interesting, but the rest is enjoyable. D'oh! Recommended.
GFT, Amazon Reviewer
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