The Simpsons Movie vs Clueless

Listen, we all love The Simpsons, but the idea of a Simpsons movie feels so, I dunno, 1995, right? Shouldn’t a Simpsons movie have arrived before the South Park or Beavis and Butthead movies? Shouldn’t quotes and plotlines from The Simpsons: The Movie have been part of the culture before Stephen Colbert or Tina Fey or Borat? I mean, think about it: Seinfeld began and ended its run during the lifetime of The Simpsons. So did Nirvana, and The Sopranos and Bill Clinton. Why did they wait so long to make a grand gesture like this?  Oh well, they did, and here we are.

It’s hard to review a movie like The Simpsons, because there’s pretty much nothing I can tell you that you don’t know. Do you like The Simpsons on TV? Then you’ll like the movie. Don’t like The Simpsons? You won’t like the movie. Used to like The Simpsons, but don’t now? You’ll like parts of it. Don’t know anything about The Simpsons? Leave. Leave this place and never return.

The Simpsons movie assumes you are familiar with the existing world of the Simpsons family and the residents of Springfield. No one is introduced, no exposition exists for anyone in terms of jobs, relatives or history. The movie starts as any episode would, and if you don’t know who say, Millhouse is, then no one is going to tell you.

The plot is fairly arbitrary, just as it was in the Beavis and Butthead and South Park movies, but here it is: Springfield Lake is so polluted it’s becoming a danger to the outside world. One guess who’s recently acquired a new pet pig and needs a place to dump his silo full of manure. Soon, Springfield is trapped in a government-issued dome, and Homer is the scourge of the city. Like any episode of The Simpsons, the movie version takes on varying subplots, most of which are strung together loosely only to end in the same place. You might wonder, watching the trailer, how Spider-pig relates to Homer leading a pack of dogs in Alaska, but it does.

The movie does its best to hold up the conventions of the show. There are topical references: Lisa hosts a seminar on the environment called An Irritating Truth, although an episode dealing with the Little Lisa Recycling Plant occurred over a decade ago, and was funnier. There are a few celebrity cameos (Tom Hanks being the funniest among them), but none are gratuitous or trendy. The animation looks great, the voices are as perfect as ever, and there’s even a token PG-13 swear thrown in for good measure. But most of it is just safely funny. The Simpsons movie doesn’t want to disappoint any viewers still with the show, and they don’t want to disappoint anyone who maybe checked out ten years ago. So they’ve got Bart longing for the traditional fathering of Ned Flanders—which has already happened on the show—and Lisa being the last unheard voice of reason about the environment—which already happened on the show—and Marge being torn over her devotion to her husband, even though logically she should be on the first bus out of town—which has happened on the show, a lot. But then there’s Spider-pig, and a great bit with Moe’s bar, and a family that resembles a defaced Simpsons “Wanted Poster”. There’s some funny stuff here.

But it’s not 1995. By now I wanted the fourth Simpsons movie. Or the first Itchy and Scratchy movie, with silhouettes of the Simpson’s kids watching down front, like Mystery Science Theater.

You know what was on the other day? Clueless. I hadn’t seen it since it first came out, but I caught it from the beginning, and learned the following: Amy Heckerling is a smart comedy director, and should probably work more; the cast is excellent and mostly still famous; Alicia Silverstone is a stone fox and needs a new agent; Clueless is shallow, just for teens, stuck in 1995, and very, very funny.

Okay, maybe only one “very”. But Clueless holds up as well as a piece of 1990s nostalgia as any John Hughes movies do for the 1980s. It’s not joke-a-minute like The Simpsons, but it’s close. The comments made on the cultures of the young, rich and famous are spot-on and pretty prescient about a society where Paris Hilton holds court with Larry King. Alicia Silverstone had great comic timing in this, and was paired not only with Jeremy Sisco, but Paul Rudd. A baby Donald Faison plays her best friend’s boyfriend. Dan Hedaya is her dad. What’s not to like? I mean, besides the fact that they didn’t take twenty years to make it?

The Simpsons: B
Clueless: B+