Early Simpsons Movie Reviews
What Reviewers Are Saying About Fox's Upcoming Film
Some early reviews of The Simpsons Movie are in, and it seems like it’s gonna be a winner, at least among critics.
Kirk Honeycutt over at The Hollywood Reporter says, “The Simpsons Movie is everything a fan of the 18-year-old animated Fox television series could ask for” and says the flick “looks like a winner for 20th Century Fox and Gracie Films.
“In going for boxoffice (sic) gold,” Honeycutt continues, “The Simpsons' trusted and loyal crew . . . have labored long and hard to make a movie that hearkens back to the vintage years of the series. It's caustic, irreverent, constantly amusing and a tiny bit rude.”
Brian Lowry at Variety is a little less effusive in his praise, saying, “if somebody had to make a Simpsons movie, this is pretty much what it should be -- clever, irreverent, satirical and outfitted with a larger-than-22-minutes plot, capable (just barely) of sustaining a narrative roughly four times the length of a standard episode.”
Lowry continues, saying “the credited team of 11 writers (all of them at one time producers on the show) have incorporated plenty of knowing flourishes the audience will surely appreciate -- among them an especially smart bit at the outset, directly addressing why anyone would pay “to see something we get on TV for free.” Along the way, the writers gleefully bite the hands that feed them at Fox, dismiss Disney as an evil empire, and lampoon U.S. government functionaries as inept buffoons who celebrate finally catching somebody they’re pursuing.”
He stops short of making this review a total rave, with “For all of that, the movie drags in places. Yet as is invariably the case with The Simpsons, the smaller, practically throwaway gags often provide the biggest laughs, whether it’s Tom Hanks’ earnest cameo as himself, a Titanic riff or Bart’s sure-to-be-talked-about skateboarding sequence, yielding a fleeting but riotous glimpse of animated genitalia.”
So far, the Twentieth Century Fox flick is rocking a 100% Fresh Rating on Rotten Tomatoes. That said, the site has only compiled 7 reviews of the flick so far, and none of them have hailed it as a cinematic classic. The average rating is 7.9 out of 10 so far.
The general consensus seems to be, to quote Ben Walters at Time Out: “although this long-awaited big-screen outing for Springfield’s finest is far from disappointing, it can’t be said to represent the quantum leap from the TV series that fans might have been hoping for either.”
Do these early reviews mean The Simpsons Movie will be a success? No guarantees, but it can’t hurt. Lousy reviews didn’t stop Shrek the Third from pulling down over $300 million in box office this summer, while solid notices haven’t helped Surf’s Up reach the $60 million mark after seven weeks in theatres. Disney/Pixar’s Ratatouille is making decent coin ($165 million so far) but it hasn’t been the blockbuster the Mouse House was hoping for.
Hang on: looking back at my previous remarks, it’s painfully obvious that good reviews for a flick almost always translates into lousy box office. Therefore, Matt Groening, James L. Brooks and Al Jean should be quivering in their boots at the thought that this long-awaited The Simpsons Movie will be a critical darling but a financial flop. To the bargain-basement hell racks with you! Jest kidding.
I’ll be reviewing The Simpsons Movie on Friday. I’ll let you know what I think of it then.
