Can The Simpsons Movie rejuvenate a flagging show?
Last weekend, US movie-goers were unexpectedly let in on a very well-kept secret. A short teaser, featuring Homer Simpson squeezed into a Superman vest and forgetting his lines, announced that The Simpsons movie will be released next year. Within hours the trailer was on the internet, where it joined rumours about its possible plot, and the debate over whether a movie is a good move. Last year, The Simpsons creator Matt Groening said that a movie would either "kill the show or completely reinvigorate it". This week he joked that "we've been running a little behind schedule. But only by about 15 years or so".
It's not one of his funnier gags, given that among the excited internet chatter has been the dreaded feeling that making a movie now is a very bad idea indeed, something that might have worked 15 years ago when the show could actually justify its reputation for comedic brilliance.
Now, the arrival of a 90-minute movie is a major risk for a TV show which has for several years struggled to get many laughs into 25 minutes every week. More than 360 episodes of The Simpsons have been made since 1989, and most of its greatest episodes are at least a decade old. A couple of years ago, when its writers were asked for their favourite episodes, they could only come up with one that had been made after 1997.
The show has been criticised for running low not only on jokes, but on the humanity that once made it touching and hilarious. It has been accused of giving way to dumb plots and strained sight gags and for mining the limited comedy of one-dimensional minor characters, such as Comic Book Guy. But its biggest crime is in messing with its fattest icon. Too often in recent years, Homer Simpson seemed to lose that winning mixture of confusion, sweetness, rage, stupidity, paternity and accidental wisdom that made him the cholesterol-clogged heartbeat of the show. More often than not in new episodes, he is simply an unlikeable jerk.
Still, after a slide in the ratings The Simpsons has had a resurgence of sorts in the US, and remains one of the Fox network's top shows. But The Simpsons movie comes along at a time when its crown is being challenged by another dysfunctional family, in which a good-hearted woman is married to an overweight lug who spends too much time getting drunk and ignoring his kids. Family Guy - which airs on Fox just half an hour after The Simpsons - has become the cartoon of the moment. Equal parts satirical and scatological, it was first aired in 1999, but cancelled after three series. However, strong DVD sales and a petition brought it back to the screens last year. Its animation and humour are often unsophisticated, but it is far more cutting about modern celebrity and politics (including the war on terrorism), and clips from new episodes become viral hits on the internet in a way that The Simpsons clips are not.
The show owes a huge amount to The Simpsons, with the family guy himself, Peter Griffin, obviously Homer-esque. The Simpsons' writers have gone out of their way to mock the similarities. In one Halloween episode, Homer created clones of himself, one of which was Peter Griffin.
The Simpsons will be hoping to match the success of another TV series turned movie, South Park. With solid satire and even better songs, that film version rejuvenated what was then seen as a flagging, one-joke cartoon. Then again, South Park didn't have to live up to a reputation of being a high point of modern culture.
The Simpsons movie screenplay is said to be completed, and according to the often-reliable Ain't It Cool News website it may feature Homer causing such a problem with the nuclear power plant that a dome is placed over the city. A Fox press release suggests that Minnie Driver, Albert Brooks and the real Erin Brockovich will be among the guest stars. But only on its release in the summer of 2007 will we know if punters will leave cinemas complaining, a la Homer, "I've seen plays better than this!"
