Twenty years after their television debut, renowned animated comedy series The Simpsons finally escapes the small screen to make its theatrical debut - imaginatively titled "The Simpsons Movie." With typical big screen epic flair, the film finds the fate of Springfield - the Simpson's infamous fictional hometown - in the hands of the family's hapless patriarch, Homer Jay.
Diehard fans of the series will no doubt love the film, and newcomers will find it easy to follow along without ever having seen a single episode; but the question remains...was it really worth the wait?
The Film
After Homer turns Springfield into "the most polluted city in the history of the planet," by dumping his pet pig's refuse into the contaminated sludge of Lake Springfield, the town is sealed off from the rest of the nation under a giant dome by the head of the United States Environmental Protection Agency. What's more, the EPA has targeted the town for total annihilation. Once the townsfolk get wind of the fact that it is Homer who has caused their predicament, they set upon the Simpson family with torches, pitchforks, and other typical "angry mob" paraphernalia. The family manages to escape through a sinkhole in their backyard, and from there they make their way to Alaska where Homer plans to make a new start and forget all about Springfield. All is not well, however - Marge, having finally grown weary of Homer's constant selfish exploits, packs up the kids and makes her way back without him. She and the children are quickly taken into custody and placed back in the dome. Homer then decides he must change his ways to not only save his marriage, but to rescue his family and save the very town which drove him out.
It all sounds very dire, but believe me, it's not as doom and gloom as it may seem. The feature actually plays out very lightly, because "The Simpsons Movie" more closely resembles a long, two hour Simpsons episode than it does a theatrical feature. It was not an easy task to produce a film adaptation for a series with over 400 episodes and nearly 20 seasons under its belt. The main detriment to a Simpsons film is how to, once again, spin it afresh without treading through familiar territory.
That said, there was nothing innately bad about "The Simpsons Movie." It offers two hours of mildly amusing entertainment in the signature Simpsons style of one gag strung after the next, including the obligatory subversive social commentaries on government, religion, and sex; but therein lies the problem. The creators did not break any new ground taking The Simpsons to the big screen. Here, out from under the ever-watchful eyes of the FCC, the filmmakers proffer little else than a glimpse of Bart's genitalia and jokes about Bart's drinking problem.
Tentative use of creative freedom aside, the film moves along at a rapid pace and offers some laughs along the way. Certainly The Simpsons Movie makes a decent weekend popcorn flick, if nothing else. I surely don't think anyone was expecting a profound cinematic statement out of this film -- I certainly wasn't. So, to answer the question I posed -- was it worth the wait? Only to the most ardent fans of the series would that answer be "yes." To the rest of humanity, I would say "no," but that doesn't mean it's not worth a watch if you're in the mood for some mindless amusement every now and again.
For an alternate take on the film see BPBS Movie Editor Joe Lozito's review.
The Picture
Presented on this high definition Blu-ray Disc release in its original theatrical release aspect ratio of 2.35:1 in a 1080p/24 MPEG2 video encoding @ 37 MBPS, "The Simpsons Movie" looks spectacular. Colors are vivid and virtually pop from the screen, contrast ratio and black level is spot on so that nothing is ever washed out; black crush is never an issue, either. There were no instances of posterization that I could see. The entire color palette looked silky smooth.
There were reports around the Internet from some users about edge enhancement on this title, but not to my eyes. I can say without a doubt that I saw no edge enhancement crop up on this title at all; this transfer and encoding were nearly perfect. I say nearly perfect because there was one fleeting moment during the "mob" scene when the Simpsons were being chased out of Springfield where I noticed the picture very briefly display some macroblocking, noticeable in the running crowd's torch flames. It couldn't have lasted any more than 1 or 2 seconds, but this forces me to take the slightest mark off of this otherwise flawless presentation.
The Audio
For this release, as is typical with Fox, a DTS-HD MA lossless 5.1 surround soundtrack is included, albeit at only 48kbps/24-bit resolution. As I do not yet have a means of streaming the DTS-HD MA bitstream into my receiver for decoding, nor will my Blu-ray player (Panasonic DMP-BD10) decode it internally, I had to listen to the full bitrate "core" DTS track (1.5Mb/s). Still, the DTS core is better than anything you will hear on any DVD, though not as good as a lossless PCM or even a DTS-HD HR soundtrack would have been. It's still an excellent gauge of the overall mix, which was very good, but not great.
The first thing most longtime fans of the series will probably notice is how aggressive and booming everything sounds in comparison to the typical muted stereo presentation of the series (or technicaly Dolby ProLogic-encoded stereo). Dialogue is very clear and cuts through the mix, and the LFE is almost overused, making the mix quite bottom heavy. Discrete sounds are placed in the rears often and there is much movement, especially in the "action" sequences. There is not much use of ambience in the surrounds to bring everything together, so things sound somewhat disconnected; overall it makes the mix feel a bit claustrophobic. Other than that, it is easy on the ears. High frequencies are slightly subdued so listener fatigue never becomes an issue, and placement of dialogue and special effects all seemed logical and precise.
The Extras
There are two audio commentaries, the first of which features series creators James L. Brooks and Matt Groening, producers Al Jean and Mike Scully, director David Silverman and voice actors Dan Castellaneta and Yeardley Smith. The second features David Silverman with writers and producers Mike B. Anderson, Steven Dean Moore and Rich Moore. Both commentary tracks feature the typical droning on by all parties involved about various and sundry minutiae that I'm betting most fans of The Simpsons will not be interested in - such as how many re-writes the script went through, etc. And of course there's the nagging problem of multiple voices competing to be heard over one another - why do they still insist on putting these, more often than not, boring commentaries on these releases?
Kudos to Fox for including all of the bonus video content in 1080p high definition, but it's not much to speak of. There are six deleted scenes that some may find amusing, as well as an alternate ending. There's "Special Stuff", culled presumably from The Simpsons Movie promotional rounds: "Homer's Monologue on The Tonight Show," "Homer Simpson Introduces American Idol/The Simpsons Judge American Idol" and "Let's All Go to the Lobby." Lastly, there's "Lots of Trailers," which consist of four theatrical trailers and one teaser, all in 1080p high definition.
Final Thoughts
As a showcase for animation in high definition, this Blu-ray Disc release ranks slightly below Disney-Pixar's releases of "Ratatouille" and "Cars" on Blu-ray, which are, for now, the standard by which all others should be compared to. In terms of high definition drawn animation, it even ranks below a number of quality animŽ BD titles, such as the Japanese release of Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, or the U.S. release of Paprika. Both examples hold the trophies as far as drawn animation in high definition goes, in my opinion, though examples of "Western" animated features on Blu-ray are still hard to come by so early in the format's life. "The Simpsons Movie" is a strong contender which looks very good, sounds almost as good, and will certainly give your system a decent workout.
As for the film itself, however, they could have done much better than the final product. The opportunity for expansion, bolder direction, or even greater amounts of racy mischief presented in the move to the silver screen should have been seized upon and fleshed out a bit. Alas, it was not, and the creators opted instead for safe, predictable pap. The resulting film was a bit of a letdown, but will still be a thrill for diehard fans who waited for so many years to see their favorite dysfunctional animated family on the big screen. This Blu-ray Disc captures the film almost perfectly; if it's not a buy, it is at the very least a strong rental candidate.
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