Still Yellow After All These Years

I'll be completely honest. I was really worried about "The Simpsons Movie." On TV the show fell from it's prime around when I was in 9th grade, and I had doubts about whether the half-hour format would stay funny over a long period of time.

Luckily "The Simpsons Movie" turned out to be a lot of fun. Remember back in the day when you would watch a really good Simpsons episode, but then it would just be all over too quick? And you wished you could watch more, but instead something crappy like "King of the Hill" came on next? Well, the movie plays like a one-and-a-half hour episode from the golden age. It makes you remember WHY you used to like the tv show so much (and now that I've enjoyed the movie, I may be willing to give the tv show another chance). And it's also really fun to sit in a theater and laugh with an entire crowd of Simpsons fans.

That having been said, there was very little the Simpsons movie did do differently from the show, but perhaps that's for the best. Better to do what they do correct than take extreme risks and fail. And I did enjoy the PG-13 touches that still didn't bring the level of comedy lower. Bart's nude moment probably had me laughing harder than any other joke, and I also enjoyed Homer giving the finger and Auto sucking his bong. I was a little bummed that some of my favorite minor Simpsons characters didn't get a lot of screen time (Mr. Burns, Smithers, Apu, was Sideshow Bob even IN the movie?), but you can only do so much, and it's best that they focused on the Simpsons family in the SIMPSONS movie anyway. I did think Lisa's subplot was a little useless, and ALL of the subplots were re-hashes of things we've seen in other episodes, but that's still fine. Finally, my last (minor) gripe was that the trip to Alaska seemed an odd choice for the movie, and more like something you'd base an episode around, but I didn't mind. I've done a fair bit of bellyaching here, but really, my faith in my favorite show from my pre-teens has been restored. Wholesale. Thanks Homer.

In other AWESOME news, I just found out that my #1 choice for Guitar Hero will be featured in Guitar Hero #3. That's right...ROCK YOU LIKE A HURRICANE will be one of the songs in "Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock." It's pretty much the best piece of wish-fulfillment I've had in a while (I'm not sure whether that's really cool or really sad...oh well).