Come Back, Apu

Therefore, it is a matter of elementary logic that The Simpsons Movie is wonderful, since it exists solely because its creators came up with the glorious notion they were searching for. And for that reason, the world has been singing Deo Gratias in anticipation of its release. The series has banked a great deal of goodwill over the 18 years of its run, and Brooks and Groening are cashing in.

“I know the picture is funny,” Brooks told Entertainment Weekly about the movie, in what seemed to be a becoming display of false modesty.

Or was it? Maybe Brooks was actually speaking in these defensive terms because he knows the truth: The Simpsons Movie is a depressing, demoralizing dud. It was written by no fewer than 11 people, and judging from the final product, I would guess at least eight of them were in a crummy mood the entire time.

Perhaps that’s because they had to sit around thinking up jokes to match the bizarre storyline Brooks and Groening thought was so inspired: Homer Simpson pollutes the lake outside his hometown with pig poop and, in response, a psychotic administrator from the Environmental Protection Agency seals Springfield inside an impermeable glass dome. Nothing goes in and nothing comes out–no food, no potable water, nothing. And so Springfield descends into a Hobbesian state of nature.

This could have been the source for a great many funny bits, except that we don’t actually get to see it happen. Instead, we follow Homer Simpson, his wife Marge, and Bart, Lisa, and Maggie, all of whom have decamped to Alaska. The decision to remove the Simpsons from Springfield is one of the more mystifying choices in a movie filled with mystifying choices, as in the unthinkable decision to give the show’s greatest character, Apu of the Kwik-E-Mart, about three seconds of screen time while the annoying Comic Book Guy character pops up every 10 minutes.

The great satiric point of The Simpsons on television is that Springfield is all of America jammed into one small town. There’s no need to go anywhere else because all of America’s craziness can be found right there. Strange that the show’s own creative team didn’t understand that. Strange, too, that the movie spends so little time with Springfield’s glorious array of memorable and amusing characters.

The movie’s treatment of the Simpson family is by far its most distressing feature. Homer is really hateful here, an irredeemably awful lout until the predictable and unearned heroic finale. This narcissistic, cruel, and destructive creep brings about Springfield’s ruin. This leads his fellow townspeople to come after Homer and his family with pitchforks–even setting up a gallows noose for baby Maggie, complete with pacifier. (I like sick jokes as much as the next guy, but that’s really not funny in about 15,000 different ways.)

Bart Simpson is in full disgusted retreat from his loser-father, so much so that he decides he wants his well-meaning religious fanatic neighbor, Ned Flanders, to be his father. Flanders listens to him, is nice to him, makes him hot chocolate, and even takes him fishing. As they sit on the boat, Bart flinches every time Flanders approaches him. Why? Because he thinks Flanders is going to beat him up the way Homer did when the two of them went fishing. Yes, welcome to the Dateline NBC exposé of Homer Simpson, Child Abuser. There’s even a scene in which a tearful Marge tapes over her wedding video to let Homer know she is leaving him because of his monstrous selfishness. At which point, I found myself wondering just what genius decided to let Dr. Phil direct The Simpsons Movie.

Groening and Brooks made a conscious decision not to duplicate the show’s amazing comic density–its rat-a-tat, ten-punchlines-a-minute, you-don’t-like-that-one-well-here’s-another-one barrage of jokes–because they wanted The Simpsons Movie to work as a classically structured film. That was yet another mystifying choice.

First of all, there’s no such thing as too many laughs in a crazy comedy (as The Naked Gun, Airplane!, and There’s Something About Mary, among other films of the past few decades, prove). Second, Brooks and Groening made sure that the movie would compare unfavorably to just about every episode of the show–and there are 454 of them so far–in the risibility department. And remember, the movie is almost an hour-and-a-half long, while each TV episode runs 22 minutes.

None of this is keeping critics from talking about the movie in tones of reverence suitable to the stature of The Simpsons as a great American institution. That’s ironically appropriate, since 90 minutes in the company of The Simpsons Movie feels like a 28-day involuntary commitment.

John Podhoretz, columnist for the New York Post, is THE WEEKLY STANDARD‘s movie critic.