One Of The Best "Episodes" Of The Series

Rating: 8/10 (30 July 2007)

When Mike Judge brought his series Beavis & Butthead to the big screen, he made a commercial free 90 minute episode. Die hard fans that expected to hear the two idiot stars of the show swear and see nudity were extremely disappointed, while occasional watchers (like myself) thought it was hilarious. The result? Even though it was one of the highest grossing animated movies of all time, Beavis & Butthead were canceled the following year.
When Trey Parker & Matt Stone brought their series South Park to the silver screen, they slapped an "R" rating on their already "R" rated TV series and gave the fans what they wanted to hear, swearing and nudity. The film's plot revolved around the 4 main character's Stan, Kyle, Kenny, and Cartman swearing. The result? South Park was a huge success and recently celebrated it's 10th season on TV.
So where does the Simpson's Movie stand? Somewhere in between these 2 movies. While there are 2 scenes in the film that they could never get away with on TV, the film for the most part is a 90 minute commercial free episode. There's even a joke about that in the very beginning of the movie. However this isn't a bad thing. If they had Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie swearing on the screen it would have taken something away from it. I'm glad they stuck to what made The Simpson's such a great TV show.
In the beginning just about every supporting character makes a cameo, which is understandable, in a show that has over 1,000 supporting characters. There's even a great joke made by the punk rock band Green Day about the most successful, and over rated film of all time, Titanic. The Plot unfolds as Lisa gets the city of Springfield to clean up Springfield Lake (which is supposed to be Boston Harbor, yet another inside joke by native New Englander Matt Groening). After bending over backwards to get it clean, Homer decides to dump pig waste into it instead of the waste dump because the line was to long and he had to get to the donut shop for free donuts.
In doing this Springfield becomes the most polluted city in America and get's in-closed in a giant dome. In a nutshell everyone's life becomes hell, thanks to Homer Simpson.
The Simpson's is my all time favorite show, and I for one am psyched that they finally made it to the multi-plex after years of hinting for a movie. Die hard fans (like myself) will find it funny as hell, while even the casual fan (such as my wife, who I saw this with) will have a hard time not enjoying it. Over all it's just The Simpson's doing what The Simpson's do, just on a big screen, nothing more, nothing less.
A lot of people seem to think that the show has run out of steam, since the writing team split up to do Futurama. I have to disagree. I've been watching this series since season 1, and 18 seasons (yes you read right, 18 seasons) later, the longest running sitcom in history (I don't want to hear anybody complain about it's easier because it's animated) still has yet to let me down as I have never missed an episode.
It's nice to see that Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie have finally made it to Hollywood. However I can't help but think that maybe this could mean that the series is finally coming to it's end. If that's true I can only hope that maybe we'll see more of The Simpson's in Hollywood. That's something I can't complain about.