The Hindu : Karnataka News : Hilarity in 2-D

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Sunday, Aug 05, 2007
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Karnataka

Hilarity in 2-D

The Simpsons Movie (English)

Director: David Silverman

Voice cast: Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright

The Simpsons’ transition to the big screen has been one of the most eagerly awaited events in TV history. In hindsight, one wonders if it wasn’t the wait that rained on what should have been a great parade.

For the fans, here’s an early warning: “The Simpsons Movie” comes nowhere close to the brilliance of the show during its peak seasons.

“The Simpsons Movie” doesn’t fall flat on its face either. As the 11 heavyweight writers and director David Silverman point out, this isn’t three episodes of the series strung together. It actually has a coherent plot (without giving too much away: involving a polluted lake, a pig and the Environmental Protection Agency). In fact, going by what passes for a plot on the current seasons of the TV show, one could even call the movie’s storyline watertight.

Unlike other TV animation-to-movie jumps, this movie has enough meat to carry through the entire duration of the film. And the animation, despite remaining stubbornly 2-D, adapts well to the big-screen so that every scene gets fleshed in without the film losing the television show’s trademark minimalism. For the non-fans, there are a lot of inside jokes that will probably fly right past.

There are points when the film feels like deadweight, and although the writers do recover quickly enough, the damage is done in each case. And the biggest grouse that most fans will have is that many of our favourite minor characters don’t appear in the film, while others make far too short cameos.

At the end of the day, “The Simpsons Movie” is still a good enough watch.

RAKESH MEHAR

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