Donuts To Dollars
Posted on | July 4, 2008 at 2:15 pm | 1 Comment
One year ago today, I blogged about and posted pictures from the makeover a local 7-11 had undergone into a Kwik-E-Mart to promote The Simpsons Movie. That 7-11, like all the ones involved in the promotion, eventually reverted back to its former non-Springfieldian state and now advertises Slurpees and Asian Rolls (whatever those are) instead of Squishees and Krusty-Os. And last weekend, nearly a year after I took those photos, I finally actually saw The Simpsons Movie.
I always find it weird when there’s a feature movie made of a TV show that’s still on the air. My earliest recollection of that phenomenon was seeing the McHale’s Navy movie in the theater, even when the show was still showing up on my TV. (Although… hmmm… the numbers on that don’t quite work out, since the movie came out in 1964 when I was 4, and the TV show went from 1962-1966. I think I was more like 7 or 8 when I saw the movie, so I must’ve just been familiar with the show from the daily reruns. I remember I saw the movie at one of those Saturday Morning Matinee things at the local theater, where they would show slightly out-of-date movies for cheap to a theater full of little kids. My mom would frequently drop me off at that so she could go do other things. Those were simpler times. They had door prizes and everything. I remember winning a toy submarine that would dive to the bottom of the pool and then rise back up again, due to some kind of Mentos-like lozenge you would put in its hull. I loved that sub. But I digress.)
The most recent example I can think of is The X-Files movie . Sheesh, hard to believe that was 10 years ago already, and that there’s a second one coming out this summer. That movie sort of promised to reveal what had been going on in the TV series, but it was a predictable muddle (like the show at the time) and didn’t really make sense of anything.
The best example is South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut, which took the themes from the TV show and expanded them into something that was quite funny, moving, and spectacular. Years later, the TV show is going strong, and the movie did nothing to undermine it.
The Simpsons Movie is not quite the success that the South Park movie was, even though they both have the still-running-TV-show thing and the animation thing in common. I think it’s probably a bit harder to come up with a plot for a movie of a TV show that’s been running for nearly 20 years, since all possible plots have been done by now. South Park had only been on the air for a couple of years (with fewer episodes per year) when its movie came out. Yeah, it was cool that they were able to do some things with the big screen Simpsons that they couldn’t do on the small one, like nudity, profanity, obscene hand gestures, impossible action sequences, and better animation. But the plot, although bigger in scope than your standard Simpsons episode, still seemed like a drawn-out version of an episode. Homer does something stupid which gets him (and the whole town) in trouble, and then he has to persevere to make things right. A plot we’ve seen dozens of times on the show. But at least it was funny and entertaining and fast-moving. The celebrity cameos were kept to a minimum – pretty much just Tom Hanks, although Albert Brooks voiced the main antagonist.
I really can’t fault the producers for getting a Simpsons movie out of the way now while the show is still on, since it’s obvious they did want to do one and there was some demand for it, and it may be a long time before the show is canceled and they could do a post-show movie. Heck, in that EW issue I was talking about yesterday, they named The Simpsons as the #1 show of the past 25 years. So it may be around for awhile. I bet there will be another movie someday, but I don’t know what in the world they could do as a plot for it. Maybe Homer and Family visit the home planet of Kang & Kodos’?
Happy Independence Day, everyone! Don’t drink too much Duff Beer!
Latre.
Pet Peeve of the Day: Hearing the musical strains of an ice cream truck, craving some ice cream on a hot 4th of July day, and not having the truck actually go through my street.
Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “i smoke winstons”.
Comments
One Response to “Donuts To Dollars”
July 5th, 2008 @ 11:14 pm
I thought I was the only one who just got around to the Simpson’s movie. Your procrastination makes me feel better about my pop-culture tardiness.