Retrospective: The Simpsons Movie (Patreon)

It's a little weird to see this for the first time as an adult. I was a kid when this was released, and my friends quoted it all the time. This movie was the bit of The Simpsons that was actually contemporary to us — my peers quoted "Spider Pig" a lot more than, say, "Marge vs. the Monorail." This was the transgressive comedy of my generation — whether that says more about this movie, the overall legacy of The Simpsons, or the wasteland that was 2000s pop culture is up for debate.

Maybe this would have resonated more with me if I saw it earlier in life. Now that I've had the chance to be hugely influenced by The Simpsons, watching The Simpsons Movie felt like listening to a solid greatest hits album. All the good stuff is there, but I'm less moved by it than by something like "Lisa's Substitute" or "Scenes from the Class Struggle in Springfield."

It's not that I didn't enjoy The Simpsons Movie — hardly a minute or two passed without eliciting a belly laugh from me. "He's not Bono" and "you ever tried going mad without power? It's boring" are the sort of lines that make you glad they brought back John Swartzwelder and Jon Vitti (particularly Swartzwelder, who is probably my favorite right-wing libertarian). The movie broadly works — it successfully translates the pleasures of The Simpsons into a movie without feeling like a feature-length episode of television. The "Homer and Marge temporarily separate" beat is almost unbearably saccharine, and the Hero's Journey stuff is tiresome, although these seem like inevitable parts of Hollywood movies. But there's something depressing about watching The Simpsons get reduced to Hollywood antics.

Which is a shame, because this is a fun movie. Albert L. Brooks as a corrupt bureaucrat in a plot line that pillories the Bush-era EPA is good stuff (and a natural evolution from Brooks' character Hank Scorpio). The plot itself also works pretty well — "the EPA puts a giant dome over Springfield" is the sort of thing a Simpsons movie should be about. This is a well-constructed greatest hits compilation, even if it's depressingly nostalgic.

The highlights are "somebody throw the goddamn bomb" and the last moment with Santa's Little Helper.