Tethered Swimming

“How could you Krusty?  I’d never lend my name to an inferior product.” - Bart Simpson

“Ohh, they drove a dump truck full of money up to my house!  I’m not made of stone!” - Krusty the Klown

Heading to the theater to see The Simpsons Movie, my optimism got the better of me.  A.O. Scott, the best film critic in the country, a man whose reviews I always trust, wrote that it was about on par with “Trash of the Titans”.  I consider that episode to be above the tree line but well short of the peak, and it would’ve been a pleasant surprise if I agreed.

I was daring to hope that I’d like it enough to use this Mr. Burns quote at the top, “I’m no art critic, but I know what I hate, and I don’t hate this.”  I didn’t hate the movie, “hate” is too strong a word here.  I could never hate The Simpsons the way I hate Friends or Dateline NBC.  But using that quote would’ve implied that I felt a grudging affinity.  I feel no such thing.  My impression during the film was that it felt on par with the lesser episodes of Futurama.  I liked that show, the best of it scraped up against the tail end of good Simpsons.  I hoped that I could push it a little higher than that, I hoped that I could honestly agree with Mr. Scott.  It’s a small difference of opinion, but it’s worth pointing out.

My initial impression fed my hopes.  For the first five minutes or so, my brain was mentally recording a lot of quotable lines.  That has always been one of the hallmarks of excellent Simpsons.  Episodes that are dense with funny, insightful quotes make up the best of the best.  Those sparkling lines of wit are what carried The Simpsons from the television to the lexicon of American culture on a scale no other show can even compete with.  I know a few people with whom I can have entire conversations using nothing but Simpsons quotes and references.  At the beginning of the movie I was racking them up, but it didn’t last.

It helped that they were in a new medium.  There were new places to play and, more importantly, a giant glaring reason to make fun of themselves.  I was coming at it fresh, as much as that’s possible.  I haven’t seen a new episode from start to finish in four and a half years.  The movie wasn’t nearly good enough to make me start watching new episodes again, but it was watchable, which can’t be said for most of the episodes in double digit seasons.

I stayed through the whole thing.  It drags in places (and there were some excruciatingly boring stretches), but I did finish it.  There were a couple of time when I thought seriously about bailing.  If I’d been at home, if making it stop only required a flick of the remote instead of the pompous embarrassment of walking out, I probably would’ve paused it about halfway through, pounded a few beers and tried again.

The crowd, unfortunately, wasn’t all that interesting.  It was a typical movie crowd, maybe a few more fat guys and a few less kids than Ratatouille, but nothing jumped out at me.  They laughed at the jokes, but it wasn’t the kind of raucous, opening to closing laughter of South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut.  After I saw the South Park movie, which came out right in the middle of their third season, my sides hurt for hours.  It repeatedly had me in tears for minutes at a stretch.  For months after it came out if someone said they hadn’t seen it, people would offer to immediately watch it again.  The Simpsons Movie won’t inspire that kind of devotion.

As I walked up to the ticket counter a fifteen year old theater employee was chatting with an unoccupied ticket girl.  He was saying that he wanted to see it again.  The girl, who looked slightly older than him and probably out of his league, was agreeing.  As I wrote last Sunday, we’ll never be able to explain to kids that young what a Simpsons movie might once have meant, and his tepid desire to see it again is a testament to how far the mighty have fallen.

I realize I’m being unfair here.  The first few seasons of The Simpsons are an impossible standard to hold anything to, it was lightning in a bottle and we’ll probably never see anything like it again.  For years I’ve been ignoring new episodes of The Simpsons, placing them out of sight and out of mind as I gleefully watch and quote the old ones.  Then this movie comes along and forces the mediocrity I’ve so assiduously avoided in my face.  I have to wonder, does it mean that I’m closed minded about The Simpsons?  Maybe I’m romanticizing the past and all these cranky paragraphs I’ve just written are proof of it.  I hate those doubts and I feel dirty for even thinking them, I have a remedy though.

Sitting in my living room is a five disc DVD player.  I take a random disc from each of the first five seasons and load them.  Season six is just as good but there are only five slots, what am I to do you ask?  Five plus Playstation equals six.  (And I don’t even need to get up off the couch.)  Sometimes I watch an episode from the first season, then one from the second and so on through six.  It takes about two hours and it’s like getting a brain massage.  Other times I’ll skip around hitting two or three episodes per disc.  Those sessions last longer, but it’s bliss.  There is nary a missed joke or piece of shoddy craftsmanship.

Watching the old ones like that confirms my conviction: The Simpsons really was that brilliant.  It has since become just another middling Fox comedy and it long ago passed the championship belt for mockery of everything to South Park.  I believe that, without the slighted dramatization or histrionics, and it’s not an argument I enjoy having.

Humor remains a personal matter.  I have good, close friends that think George Carlin is a bitter, humorless man.  I, on the other hand, base my life on his teachings.  People with reasonable minds and good taste can disagree.  However, there was nothing in that movie that would alter my conclusion from last Sunday’s post.  I love The Simpsons and it needs to end.