Raking in the d'oh

Actors dressed as Bart, Homer, Marge and Lisa pose at the premiere of The Simpsons Movie in Sydney, Australia. (Gaye Gerard/Getty Images)

After 18 years, Bart Simpson finally got taller. The Simpsons, American television’s longest running sitcom (an inadequate word, kind of like calling Picasso’s Guernica a doodle) has expanded for the big screen; Marge’s hair is pine tree-high, and Homer’s belly is as wide as a hot air balloon. But why grow these characters now? After almost two decades, the film version casually strolls into a world that’s somewhat indifferent to the TV show’s existence; all those “Don’t have a cow, man” T-shirts bought in the early ’90s have long since been donated to charity and are now clothing the Third World, relics of long cooled Simpsons fever.

At this juncture, let me point out that it’s nearly impossible to discuss the The Simpsons Movie without hearing in my head the dismissive grumbling of the Comic Book Guy, that rotund recurring character lisping his contempt at the ignoramuses who will never grasp the true genius of a rare bootleg of Itchy and Scratchy Meet Fritz the Cat. In fact, every time I write about any hugely popular franchise (Star Wars, Batman), I hear that sarcastic Comic Book Guy voice berating me that I just don’t “get it” (later, he takes a human form and e-mails me from Halifax).

The Simpsons is a pop culture phenomenon that’s been internalized and absorbed by its devoted audience; favourite vignettes and characters make a currency, a measure of a certain kind of cultural literacy. Pivoting between skewering and loving mass culture — all the while embodying it — The Simpsons sells a kind of knowing, subversive, pop-savvy posture that was previously a much fringier attitude; the domain of Comic Book Guys, in fact. Whether the show means anything now is debatable, but it made television sharper and, some might say, a little meaner. Jon Stewart, Larry David, The Office — all cut with The Simpsons’ particular razor, a serrated, skeptical little number.

Funny and irreverent, anti-God (well, anti-organized religion, anyway) and anti-government, The Simpsons Movie keeps pace with its reputation, but — use Comic Book Guy voice here — it doesn’t reach the superlative perfection of some of the classic episodes. Perhaps this is a function of form: The best Simpsons shows are awesome precisely because they’re short. Each half-hour episode is packed not only with the dysfunctional titular family, but endless visual marginalia and of-the-moment political jabs; The Simpsons transcended the limitations of television. Being funny for 90 minutes and $12 just doesn’t feel like as much of an achievement.

From left, Lisa, Maggie, Marge, Homer and Bart flee Springfield in the dark of night. (Twentieth Century Fox)

As ever, Homer’s stupidity is the plot pusher. He falls in love with a pig, whom he dubs Spider-Pig (“Spider-Pig, Spider-Pig, does whatever a Spider-Pig does”), then dumps a silo of pig waste in the polluted Springfield pond, triggering an environmental disaster. The singular idiocy of Homer (voiced by Dan Castellaneta) is always matched by the collective idiocy of the town, and a torch-wielding mob wants Homer’s head, causing the Simpsons to flee. Cast out of their imperfect Eden, the family’s disillusionment with Homer reaches new heights. Marge (Julie Kavner), that paragon of patience, threatens to finally call it quits. Bad boy Bart (Nancy Cartwright), looking for a father figure, starts hanging out with creepy Christian neighbour Ned Flanders, while earnest Lisa (Yeardley Smith) is forced to abandon a blossoming romance with a wee Irish boy activist (“My father’s not Bono”).

Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons, has said that he resisted green-lighting a film in the show’s heyday because the staff was too busy keeping up with the demands of episodic television. Then, it took years to find the perfect story. After all that effort, the team of writers came up with a movie just slightly more complicated than a TV episode, but also burdened by a sense of obligation to the show’s history: Who to include, who to leave out? Mr. Burns makes an appearance, along with Apu and Carl, but by the time Bumblebee Man showed up, I got the uneasy feeling that I was audience to an expensive, animated game of Where’s Waldo?

At the moments it does achieve liftoff, The Simpsons Movie is doing what The Simpsons TV show did right: It’s an open attack on the very culture that has embraced this slightly grotesque, slightly huggable family. Greedy corporations, corrupt politicians, needy celebrities (Tom Hanks appears in an advertisement for the Environmental Protection Agency: “Hi, I’m Tom Hanks. The government has lost its credibility so it’s borrowing mine,”) are just some of the hypocrites that The Simpsons lives to kick. Left or right, cool or uncool, no one is safe. In the film, faux-punk band Green Day drowns in the toxic lake, and An Inconvenient Truth gets tweaked to An Irritating Truth.

And yet, the film drops far fewer pop references than the show, nudging the family dynamics front and centre. The Simpsons endures because, as all defenders note, it’s ultimately a show about family. For all its sniggering, Groening’s crew has a deep understanding of the real bonds that exist between parents and children, sisters and brothers, husbands and wives, even when their day-to-day behaviour violates every notion of the perfect family — an image of perfection constructed, of course, on television. When Homer and Marge outrun disaster for the umpteenth time, their yellow bodies bouncing back to life yet again, The Simpsons moves beyond satire. It’s a three-dimensional love story that just happens to be a cartoon.

The Simpsons Movie opens July 27 across Canada.

Katrina Onstad writes for CBCnews.ca Arts.

CBC does not endorse and is not responsible for the content of external sites - links will open in new window.