Post by Harkovast on Dec 16, 2014 0:48:49 GMT
The Simpsons Movie
Alright then, I'm about to shit you up with what I say next, so brace yourself.
The Simpsons aren't funny.
You have my permission to now go ape shit.
What? You want me to justify that outrageous statement?
Damn you people are demanding.
The fact is the Simpsons USED to be funny, once upon a time, but those days are long, long gone.
Now back in the day, the Simpsons was not just funny, it was genius. I will gladly sing its praises.
The episode Life on the Fast Lane (where Marge is seduced by a French bowling instructor) is one of the greatest half hours of television ever penned. No exaggeration. It is wonderfully paced, hilariously funny, beautifully subtle and tremendously moving (often all at the same time!)
Permit me the indulgence of quoting a few classic lines?
Worker-'But Homer, what do I tell the Boss'
Homer- 'You tell him I'm going to the back seat of my car, with the woman I love and I wont be back FOR TEN MINUTES!'
If you weren't cheering for Homer when he said that, you have no soul!
So I loved the Simpsons as much as anyone back in the day, the show was essential viewing.
But nothing lasts forever, and over time all television series start to run out of steam. Characters get reduced to moronic catch phrases and exaggerated mannerisms and slowly the shows creators forget what made it good in the first place.
Homer has gone from a deeply flawed but well meaning man, trying to do the best for his family but failing through a combination of his own flaws and life's cruel circumstance, to a freakish giggling lunatic (seriously, can we find the fuck wit that first had the idea to make Homer giggle like a little girl and shoot them in the head?) He spouts nonsense, gets hit by increasingly painful objects for increasingly diminishing returns.
The subtly, the beautifully crafted stories about the lives of these characters? All thrown away and replaced with a shit storm of annoying catch phrases and irritating cameos.
In fact the cameos give a good insight into what is wrong with the show these days. Way back when, the Simpsons mocked celebrity cameos with TV's Troy McClure (you might remember him from such shows as the Simpsons, or Christmas Ape 2, Christmas Ape goes to Summer Camp.) Now they are doing the very thing they used to mock, with a completely straight face!
'Hi, I'm a celebrity of the moment, here for a very unfunny sequence because I am a publicity whore and I think the Simpsons is a good way to forward my worthless career.'
If I was a celebrity I would refuse to go on the Simpsons.
Oh yeah, you think, that is easy to say, but you would if you really had the chance.
No, actually I wouldn't. If RIGHT NOW someone offered me the chance, sure I would, I'd like to be on TV, get to plug Harkovast etc.
But if I was already a celebrity? I'm already rich and famous! I would enjoy the opportunity to tell the Simpsons creators to fuck right off!
When the Simpsons movie came out, I assumed it would be utter shit like the show had become.
But I listened to people (always a mistake) and they told me that the shows creators had been saving the best jokes for the movie (thus making the show suffer.)
This seems an unlikely explanation since the show has been unfunny for over ten years now, but ever the optimistic I decided to give the movie a go on DVD (because it was cheap.)
Don't listen to people.
People talk shit!
If they were saving the best jokes for this movie I can only assume the show now consists of nothing but Homer in an empty room crying because he has been raped... which is pretty much what has happened to the franchise when you think about it!
The Movie is all about ...actually I'm not sure. Worse then that, I don't think the movie makers are sure!
The plot is an erratic mess. Elements are introduced in a haphazard, thrown together way that doesn't really flow towards anywhere or amount to anything.
To begin with, Homer gets a pig. Remember the trailers? With 'Spider Pig'? Homers pet pig that he is holding up to walk on the ceiling? Wasn't that funny? And then at the end of the trailer Homer says 'He's not Spider Pig, now he's Harry Plopper! I was excited to see what other funny movie reference pig humour Homer had in store.
The answer was none. I just told you ALL of the jokes about that pig. I am not exaggerating!
This is like showing a trailer with a big explosion and a guy throwing punches only to reveal there is only one explosion and the punches you saw are the only ones thrown in the movie. What a fucking rip-off!
The pigs large amounts of poop cause some sort of environmental chain reaction that means the town has to be sealed under a giant glass dome...I feel ashamed just writing that out here, and I DIDN'T MAKE IT UP!
So you are probably thinking the movie has an environmental message, right? Wrong.
Environmentalism doesn't really go anywhere and the pollution problem is never really dealt with.
Lisa gets an Irish boyfriend, who isn't really in the movie and that doesn't go anywhere either. You'll start to notice a trend with these plot elements.
The Simpsons flee the town to Alaska, and hilarity follows. By hilarity, I mean jack shit.
My wife used to live in Alaska, so our interest peaked to see what sort of comedy they would get at the expense of Alaska. The answer, of course, is fuck all. It feels like they just threw darts at a map to determine where this sequence should be set! There is absolutely no reason it is in Alaska and no comedy to be mined from this concept.
Homer ends up meeting a mystical native Alaskan shaman woman who sends him on a vision quest. That is what Native Americans do, isn't it? Go on vision quests.
We can have white people in movies that don't pray to God and get miracles. We can have Chinese people who don't spend the whole film doing Kung-fu. We don't seem to have to have every black character be a gangster rapper or a voodoo shaman.
But for some reason, racial profiling becomes okay as soon as we get to Native Americans.
Why must Native Americans ALWAYS do this stuff? Why can't they just behave normally, like normal people do?
Even on fucking Star Trek Voyager, set in the future when humans no longer have religion, the one Indian guy never shuts the fuck up about spirit quests and 'my people'.
So all humanity has united together to build the federation, except the Indians, who still seem to live in tee-pees!
Why can't we have a Native American character who works in a shop? He likes playing video games and eats too much fast food. Let's say he likes the girl at work, but is too nervous to ask her out. He might believe in the religion of the Apache tribe, but it never comes up in the story, the same way the Jewish characters or the Christian characters don't have to constantly start praying or telling us what God thinks about the situation.
In other words, the guy is just a normal person, like everyone else! He isn't a mystical spirit guide, he ain't on a journey for his ancestors to learn the ways of the buffalo...he is just ordinary!
I have literally never seen a character like the one I just described. Am I the only one who finds that level of blatant racism slightly scary?
So anyway, Homer goes on a vision quest (something that has already happened in earlier episodes of the series where it was handled far better)
He then leaves the Native American chara...hahah, sorry! I almost managed to call her a character without cracking up!
He then leaves the offensive cliche and goes to try to win back his family, which is falling apart (something that has already happened in earlier episodes of the series where it was handled far better.)
The villain of the film is a guy from the environmental protection agency who wants to blow up Springfield with a bomb. Is this film trying to be shit now?
Interestingly, while watching the film I never realised this guy was the baddy till very near the end (when he abruptly became a James Bond villain for no explained reason.)
He was just so boring.
He was so bland, uninteresting and unfunny that it never occurred to me he was very important.
Homer learns to ride a motor bike on his travels (fuck knows, I am passed the point of trying to explain this shit!) and uses these skills to save the town. In town has gone all Mad Max while he was away and Moe is now king. But this goes nowhere and is soon forgotten about.
And then the movie does the first good move it has made so far.
It ends.
This movie is just crap.
It coasts on a wave of nostalgia from people who like the series and refuse to accept the awful truth. The show they once loved is long gone, and what remains is not only not as good as the show they used to enjoy, it is not good by any measure at all.
Fuck these yellow fuck wits!
By now a lot of you are probably angry at me. How dare I kill the sacred cow of your beloved Simpsons! The show is still edgy, right? Still relevant?
Well ask yourself this, which are your favourite episodes and which series of the show do those episodes come from?
Were any of them from the last series?
Were any of them from the series before that?
In fact, were any of them made within the last ten years?
Don't bother to check, I will save you the time by stating the answer that we all know but not all of others are willing to face up too.
(Life on the Fast Lane was from series 1, in case you wondered about my own pick.)
The Simpsons WAS funny. In fact it WAS one of the greatest television programs of all time.
Anyone who denies those statements is a philistine.
But they are statements in the past tense.
If you say them in the current tense or future tense, you would be lying.
Just like all the Simpsons fans are lying to themselves.
Conclusion- Spider Pig Shit.
Alright then, I'm about to shit you up with what I say next, so brace yourself.
The Simpsons aren't funny.
You have my permission to now go ape shit.
What? You want me to justify that outrageous statement?
Damn you people are demanding.
The fact is the Simpsons USED to be funny, once upon a time, but those days are long, long gone.
Now back in the day, the Simpsons was not just funny, it was genius. I will gladly sing its praises.
The episode Life on the Fast Lane (where Marge is seduced by a French bowling instructor) is one of the greatest half hours of television ever penned. No exaggeration. It is wonderfully paced, hilariously funny, beautifully subtle and tremendously moving (often all at the same time!)
Permit me the indulgence of quoting a few classic lines?
Worker-'But Homer, what do I tell the Boss'
Homer- 'You tell him I'm going to the back seat of my car, with the woman I love and I wont be back FOR TEN MINUTES!'
If you weren't cheering for Homer when he said that, you have no soul!
So I loved the Simpsons as much as anyone back in the day, the show was essential viewing.
But nothing lasts forever, and over time all television series start to run out of steam. Characters get reduced to moronic catch phrases and exaggerated mannerisms and slowly the shows creators forget what made it good in the first place.
Homer has gone from a deeply flawed but well meaning man, trying to do the best for his family but failing through a combination of his own flaws and life's cruel circumstance, to a freakish giggling lunatic (seriously, can we find the fuck wit that first had the idea to make Homer giggle like a little girl and shoot them in the head?) He spouts nonsense, gets hit by increasingly painful objects for increasingly diminishing returns.
The subtly, the beautifully crafted stories about the lives of these characters? All thrown away and replaced with a shit storm of annoying catch phrases and irritating cameos.
In fact the cameos give a good insight into what is wrong with the show these days. Way back when, the Simpsons mocked celebrity cameos with TV's Troy McClure (you might remember him from such shows as the Simpsons, or Christmas Ape 2, Christmas Ape goes to Summer Camp.) Now they are doing the very thing they used to mock, with a completely straight face!
'Hi, I'm a celebrity of the moment, here for a very unfunny sequence because I am a publicity whore and I think the Simpsons is a good way to forward my worthless career.'
If I was a celebrity I would refuse to go on the Simpsons.
Oh yeah, you think, that is easy to say, but you would if you really had the chance.
No, actually I wouldn't. If RIGHT NOW someone offered me the chance, sure I would, I'd like to be on TV, get to plug Harkovast etc.
But if I was already a celebrity? I'm already rich and famous! I would enjoy the opportunity to tell the Simpsons creators to fuck right off!
When the Simpsons movie came out, I assumed it would be utter shit like the show had become.
But I listened to people (always a mistake) and they told me that the shows creators had been saving the best jokes for the movie (thus making the show suffer.)
This seems an unlikely explanation since the show has been unfunny for over ten years now, but ever the optimistic I decided to give the movie a go on DVD (because it was cheap.)
Don't listen to people.
People talk shit!
If they were saving the best jokes for this movie I can only assume the show now consists of nothing but Homer in an empty room crying because he has been raped... which is pretty much what has happened to the franchise when you think about it!
The Movie is all about ...actually I'm not sure. Worse then that, I don't think the movie makers are sure!
The plot is an erratic mess. Elements are introduced in a haphazard, thrown together way that doesn't really flow towards anywhere or amount to anything.
To begin with, Homer gets a pig. Remember the trailers? With 'Spider Pig'? Homers pet pig that he is holding up to walk on the ceiling? Wasn't that funny? And then at the end of the trailer Homer says 'He's not Spider Pig, now he's Harry Plopper! I was excited to see what other funny movie reference pig humour Homer had in store.
The answer was none. I just told you ALL of the jokes about that pig. I am not exaggerating!
This is like showing a trailer with a big explosion and a guy throwing punches only to reveal there is only one explosion and the punches you saw are the only ones thrown in the movie. What a fucking rip-off!
The pigs large amounts of poop cause some sort of environmental chain reaction that means the town has to be sealed under a giant glass dome...I feel ashamed just writing that out here, and I DIDN'T MAKE IT UP!
So you are probably thinking the movie has an environmental message, right? Wrong.
Environmentalism doesn't really go anywhere and the pollution problem is never really dealt with.
Lisa gets an Irish boyfriend, who isn't really in the movie and that doesn't go anywhere either. You'll start to notice a trend with these plot elements.
The Simpsons flee the town to Alaska, and hilarity follows. By hilarity, I mean jack shit.
My wife used to live in Alaska, so our interest peaked to see what sort of comedy they would get at the expense of Alaska. The answer, of course, is fuck all. It feels like they just threw darts at a map to determine where this sequence should be set! There is absolutely no reason it is in Alaska and no comedy to be mined from this concept.
Homer ends up meeting a mystical native Alaskan shaman woman who sends him on a vision quest. That is what Native Americans do, isn't it? Go on vision quests.
We can have white people in movies that don't pray to God and get miracles. We can have Chinese people who don't spend the whole film doing Kung-fu. We don't seem to have to have every black character be a gangster rapper or a voodoo shaman.
But for some reason, racial profiling becomes okay as soon as we get to Native Americans.
Why must Native Americans ALWAYS do this stuff? Why can't they just behave normally, like normal people do?
Even on fucking Star Trek Voyager, set in the future when humans no longer have religion, the one Indian guy never shuts the fuck up about spirit quests and 'my people'.
So all humanity has united together to build the federation, except the Indians, who still seem to live in tee-pees!
Why can't we have a Native American character who works in a shop? He likes playing video games and eats too much fast food. Let's say he likes the girl at work, but is too nervous to ask her out. He might believe in the religion of the Apache tribe, but it never comes up in the story, the same way the Jewish characters or the Christian characters don't have to constantly start praying or telling us what God thinks about the situation.
In other words, the guy is just a normal person, like everyone else! He isn't a mystical spirit guide, he ain't on a journey for his ancestors to learn the ways of the buffalo...he is just ordinary!
I have literally never seen a character like the one I just described. Am I the only one who finds that level of blatant racism slightly scary?
So anyway, Homer goes on a vision quest (something that has already happened in earlier episodes of the series where it was handled far better)
He then leaves the Native American chara...hahah, sorry! I almost managed to call her a character without cracking up!
He then leaves the offensive cliche and goes to try to win back his family, which is falling apart (something that has already happened in earlier episodes of the series where it was handled far better.)
The villain of the film is a guy from the environmental protection agency who wants to blow up Springfield with a bomb. Is this film trying to be shit now?
Interestingly, while watching the film I never realised this guy was the baddy till very near the end (when he abruptly became a James Bond villain for no explained reason.)
He was just so boring.
He was so bland, uninteresting and unfunny that it never occurred to me he was very important.
Homer learns to ride a motor bike on his travels (fuck knows, I am passed the point of trying to explain this shit!) and uses these skills to save the town. In town has gone all Mad Max while he was away and Moe is now king. But this goes nowhere and is soon forgotten about.
And then the movie does the first good move it has made so far.
It ends.
This movie is just crap.
It coasts on a wave of nostalgia from people who like the series and refuse to accept the awful truth. The show they once loved is long gone, and what remains is not only not as good as the show they used to enjoy, it is not good by any measure at all.
Fuck these yellow fuck wits!
By now a lot of you are probably angry at me. How dare I kill the sacred cow of your beloved Simpsons! The show is still edgy, right? Still relevant?
Well ask yourself this, which are your favourite episodes and which series of the show do those episodes come from?
Were any of them from the last series?
Were any of them from the series before that?
In fact, were any of them made within the last ten years?
Don't bother to check, I will save you the time by stating the answer that we all know but not all of others are willing to face up too.
(Life on the Fast Lane was from series 1, in case you wondered about my own pick.)
The Simpsons WAS funny. In fact it WAS one of the greatest television programs of all time.
Anyone who denies those statements is a philistine.
But they are statements in the past tense.
If you say them in the current tense or future tense, you would be lying.
Just like all the Simpsons fans are lying to themselves.
Conclusion- Spider Pig Shit.