Posted 7/12/2007 05:21:00 PM by Douglas

When I first heard of The Simpson's movie, I thought, wow, not a decade too soon. This guy pretty much nails the suck-age on the head. That show hasn't been funny in a decade.

The Simpsons of today revels in big, stupid antics, one-note gags and obvious plot twists. The Simpsons of yesteryear, however, was a different beast, one that would have found no room for over-sized pastries pursuing characters along sidewalks. That's why it's hard to greet the arrival of the movie with whoops of excitement. If it's anything like the current TV show, this will be one of the greatest misfires in spin-off history.

Once, it was the greatest show on TV. Every episode was brimming with imagination, excitement and some of the sharpest one-liners to come out of America for decades. But above all it was smart: The Simpsons knew how to parry crudity with intelligence blow for blow. Bart's big-haired nemesis Sideshow Bob stepping on a rake nine times would be followed up with a surreal two-minute performance of HMS Pinafore. Homer lobbing a lookalike of himself over a waterfall would be followed by a reference to Walt Whitman's collection of poems, Leaves and Grass. This was dizzyingly intelligent, daring, exhilarating stuff. For every burp gag came an arch pop-culture reference. For every time Homer fell down the stairs or Bart got strangled, we had a nifty TV parody or sly political dig.

And it kept on coming, week after week. An entire generation didn't understand it. George Bush senior, then US president, even wished aloud that American families could be more like the Waltons than the Simpsons. A massive rift opened up between those who "got" The Simpsons and those who hated it. You chose your side carefully. To be a Simpsons fan was truly one of the most privileged things in the world.

Then it all changed. A new guard took over and ripped up the rules. Veterans of the show with pedigrees on venerated US comedy institutions like Saturday Night Live and The Tonight Show - Jon Vitti, George Meyer, John Schwartzwelder - either departed or went part-time. In came writers who had cut their teeth on sappy teen comedies like Blossom and unsophisticated knockabouts like Beavis and Butt-Head. A looser, lazier sensibility took hold, given free rein by new executive producer Mike Scully. And the show became stupid.

I'll stop before I quote the whole article, because it's excellent. It pretty much sums up why I won't be seeing this huge stinker of a movie.