Family Guy The Movie - Special Yellow Edition

Rating: 6/10 (4 August 2008)

I've been waiting for a Simpsons movie since I was a kid. I gave up hope and went on with my life as I got older, but the fans of old and new were still waiting for that holy grail to suddenly appear.
It finally came many years later. And, not surprisingly, i've never been so disappointed. I read one review state that this wasn't an "extended episode" compared to South Park: BLAU and Beavis and Butthead Do America. That person could never been more wrong. While the Simpsons had its moments, taking advantage of what it could accomplish on the big screen that the little screen couldn't handle (fancy CG effects, akin to Futurama) it failed to do the little things. And those little things pile up and MAKE the movie.
Beavis and Butthead had an epic journey that spanned some of America. What we got in the Simpsons was a trip to Alaska (probably written in to showcase how pretty the movie can look) and...yeah, that's pretty much it. I thought it was kind of pointless. The journey in Beavis and Butthead actually had a point and was consistent with it. Simpsons had everything tacked in just cause it wanted to be funny. Like they had a bunch of good ideas for jokes and they just picked the best ones, then based a story around it.
South Park was more epic. It made use of its R rating by going BEYOND the show and even went as far to include musical numbers. Creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker went on to state they wanted to make a movie and do some of the things they couldn't do for television. And they did just that. Simpsons, of course, didn't hit that mark. It was really a long modern Simpsons episode with Futurama-esquire CG riddled here and there to give the impression it was bigger and better than a normal TV episode. Everything else was styled in the same way as the TV show, there wasn't much to clearly make it look cinematic. Even the straight to DVD Furturama movie made up for lack of cinematic presentation with a mindblowingly good (and well thought out) story.
One of the biggest faults of this movie was the fact that it relied too heavily on Family Guy humor. Jokes that are too random and is not consistent to the story (or what little story it has). This has been going on for a few years since the Family Guy fad was in its peak. Even before, it was already steadily going downhill. Unfortunately, that carried over to this movie. Some of the jokes, especially involving a certain Pig and Maggie, fall way flat. No one in my theater was laughing. Some kid next to me was even going "okay..." during some of the so-called highlights of the film. I had the exact same thoughts, so did my friend, and so did everyone else in the theater. And the staple of the series, the character driven story lines, were completely absent.
They tried to do something like that with Bart and the Flanders family but the chemistry didn't work. It was incredibly weak how they tried to make Homer the screw up and why Bart decided to defect to the Flanders' family. Plus hasn't that already been done before? Can't really blame them for that, a show running for nearly 20 years and you're bound to run out of ideas. Plus I didn't have any sympathy for Homer. He was just dumb, not lovable dumb just...dumb. He was the cause of everything, but it seemed like he could care less. The old lovable Homer would've done all these things by accident, not knowing the harm it could bring to everyone. I also expected Maggie to play a pivotal part and was really disappointed when she was just reduced to a quick gag. The only reason why I give it a 6 instead of a 4 or 5 is cause its the Simpsons. And it's not even the Simpsons I (and millions of other people) grew up with, but its that nostalgia that gripped me and paid for my ticket ultimately. Without that, this movie would've bombed hard. I'm sure at least half of the people that saw this wanted to see classic Simpsons in the big screen even though it can't be possible now (despite many of the old writers and one of the bigger series directors coming back).
By the end of it, there was no applause. Other highly anticipated movies like the Dark Knight and Spiderman were met with applause in the end, but not this movie. Everyone just upped and left. Disappointed. This is really sad since the Simpsons is actually more iconic to modern society than either Batman or Spiderman. What's worse is that the newer episodes i've seen are finally going back to the basics: homer is not as stupid, character driven story lines are back, and the humor is stripped from its Family Guy shackles and goes back to being coherent to the story.
There is a rumor (maybe an early confirmation?) that a sequel is in the works. If the newer episodes indicate anything, it might be good if they don't try so hard. At least this was the first non-CG movie i've seen in theaters in awhile, I can give it that at least.