The Simpsons Movie

The film's American theatrical poster.

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The Simpsons Movie is the only feature length film adaptation of The Simpsons. It is produced by Gracie Films for 20th Century Fox with animation produced by Film Roman and Rough Draft Studios and was released worldwide July 27 2007. The film has been produced by James L. Brooks, Matt Groening, Al Jean, Mike Scully, and Richard Sakai and has been written by eleven of the television series' most prolific writers: Scully, Jean, Brooks, Groening, Ian Maxtone-Graham, George Meyer, David Mirkin, Mike Reiss, Matt Selman, John Swartzwelder and Jon Vitti. The film is directed by David Silverman, a former Simpsons supervising director. The film stars the regular television cast of Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright, Yeardley Smith, Hank Azaria, Harry Shearer, Pamela Hayden and Tress MacNeille.

Plot

A naked Bart hits the window of Krusty Burger, where Ned, Rod and Todd Flanders sit eating.

After a short Itchy & Scratchy cartoon, the film opens with Green Day playing at a concert at Lake Springfield. As they finish their song (The Simpsons Theme with a rock twist) they try to talk about the environment, which angers the audience to throwing trash at them. The trash in the water dissolves Green Day's barge and it sinks, killing them. At the funeral,which the Simpsons are late for (Reverend Timothy Lovejoy is up to the prayers of the faithful), Grampa is possessed and begins to scream of a coming disaster ("Horrible, horrible things are going to happen! And their gonna happen to you, and you, and you! People of Springfield! Heed this warning! A twisted tail! A thousand eyes! Trapped forever! EPA! EPA! EPA! Thanks for listening!"). This leads Marge to believe that God is sending them a message warning them about a future catastrophe.

Later that day, after unsuccessfully trying to fix the roof. Homer and Bart play a game of dare in which Homer dares Bart to skateboard nude to Krusty Burger, and Bart gets in trouble with Chief Wiggum. Homer and Bart eat at Krusty Burger where Ned Flanders shows fatherly compassion towards Bart and Homer adopts a pig as a pet when Krusty orders it to be killed shortly after taping a commercial.

Meanwhile, Lisa starts to talk about the environment, with no success until she meets an Irish boy named Colin and they combine their efforts to give a talk called "An Irritating Truth" at Town Hall, after which the town decides to clean up the lake.

Marge realises Homer named the pig "Spider-Pig" and he keeps the pig's waste in a silo, which horrifies Marge, who tells Homer to dispose of it safely. While waiting in a queue at the dump Homer is told by Lenny that Lard Lad Donuts has been shut down and that they are giving away free donuts. Homer decides on a quicker means of disposal and dumps the silo into the lake, causing it to become heavily polluted. Shortly a squirrel falls in and is severly mutated. Nearby, Flanders and Bart bond during a hike and discover the mutated squirrel, which is captured by the EPA. Russ Cargill, head of the EPA, tells President Schwarzenegger that Springfield is so polluted that the government must take drastic action. He provides Schwarzenegger with five options and he picks one at random without looking, saying he was elected to "lead" not to "read". As a result, Springfield is concealed in a giant glass destruction-proof dome and is removed from the state map.

The police soon find the pig waste silo in the lake and within seconds an angry mob approaches the Simpson's home intending the kill the whole family. The family escapes through a sink hole, which then devours the Simpson's house, including the car, treehouse and even Santa's Little Helper's doghouse thanks to Homer's size. The Simpsons are soon declared on the run from every law and order state in America and is nominated for their recent China's Problem now. In Red Rash Inn, Bart was drinking whiskey, because he is troubled due to missing Ned Flanders, being a father figure/role model, and therefore the family got angry at Homer, due to his stubborn nature, but he got a solution, he proposes that the entire family move to Alaska to which they eventually all agree on. Marge is eventually very proud of Bart for being sober, and they tried their best to give Homer another chance. While stopping for gas, Marge told the clerk that she can't decide on whether she wants diapers, ladies razor blades or beef jerky, and Marge eventually agrees on Beef Jerky to cover the whole European Thing.

An angry mob of townspeople come looking for Homer.

In Springfield, the townspeople are going crazy, running low on supplies, out of electricity, cut off from the outside air. They attempt to break the dome, in a revelation started by Barney Gumble. This is witnessed by Russ Cargill from a security camera who tells the President that they can't keep Springfield in this state forever and Cargill asks the President to choose another plan out of five, but this time manipulates him to choose the plan to blow up Springfield.

In Alaska, the family sees an advertisement presented by Tom Hanks promoting a new Grand Canyon, to be located where Springfield is. Marge and the kids decide that they must save Springfield, but Homer refuses to help the town that tried to kill them. He comes back from a nearby bar the next day to discover Marge left a video tape. She has left with the kids to save Springfield and to prove she has almost ended their marriage, she taped over their wedding video. Homer is left heartbroken and shortly after he is visited by a mysterious Native American, Homer has a vision after much torturing and reaches an epiphany: he cannot survive without others, and must save Springfield and his family.

Meanwhile, Marge, Lisa, Maggie and Bart arrive at Seattle train station and are immediately arrested by Cargill and the EPA. Homer soon discovers the family's capture and uses a crane to try and get them out after the truck stops at a crossing but with little success, by using SOP, YELD or ONE WAY signs. Bart then succeeds in gassing himself and the whole family to sleep after protesting to the driver, waking up in Springfield next morning, where Moe has become the self-proclaimed "Emperor of Springfield", although his leadership was unsuccessfully challenged by Barney. Cargill soon appears on a giant screen on the dome and tells the townspeople that Springfield is to be destroyed and they will all be killed. A helicopter then arrives and opens a hole at the top of the dome, lowering down a bomb, timed at 15 minutes. Carl tells everyone to climb the rope to safety while Cletus distracts him.

Homer climbs the dome and descends down the helicopter rope, ironically knocking the escaping town people and bomb off the rope. Homer is upset when Bart disowns him for this and accidentally kicks down the bomb, halfing its time limit, resulting in him being chased out of town again. Soon he notices a motorbike and grabs Bart who had just declared to be with the Flanders family, and they cycle up the side of the dome. Bart throws the bomb through the hole, detonating it and shattering the dome to pieces. Afterwards, Cargill appears and just when he is about to gun down Homer with a shotgun, he is knocked out by Maggie.

Everyone is safe except Dr Nick who is injured or killed when he is impaled by a large piece of dome glass. Lisa is told by Milhouse that Colin died when they were away only for him to appear afterwards. The town praises Homer, who rides off with Marge on the motorbike into the sunset. The film ends with everyone rebuilding the Simpsons house and restoring things back to the way they were.

The credits come to a pause, where we see Smithers with Mr. Burns in his looted manor, and the depressed millionaire suggests that suicide for Smithers might cheer him up sometime. The credits breifly pause again, when we see Tom Hanks asking the audience that if they see him in real life, to leave him be.

While the credits roll, the Simpsons are (still) watching the movie in a theater, and Lisa wants to see that no animals were harmed during filming, which she does. Before they leave, Maggie says "sequel". During the credits, the Springfield National Anthem was based on the French National anthem, La Marseillaise, due to Springfield admiting that THEY don't have their own anthem, and therefore they stole their tune by paying a short guy to write it, but vanished, because the French does outstanding things like making love, wine and Roquefort, Camembert and Brie cheese. At the very end of the credits, the Squeaky Voiced Teen cleans up the floor, not thinking four years in film school was really worth it.

Trivia

General

Moe's Tavern is shown as "Moe's Bar".
The ambulance wreckage from "Bart the Daredevil" remains at the side of Springfield Gorge.

Production

The season 4 episode "Kamp Krusty" was originally going to be a film, but difficulties were encountered in writing a movie length script, at which point the movie plans were dropped in favor of a season premiere.
Before his death, Phil Hartman had always wanted to create a live action Troy McClure film, with several of the staff saying that they would have loved to help create it.
Matt Groening expressed a wish to make Simpstasia, a parody of the Disney film Fantasia.
Production began in 2001.
Numerous plots were considered: Al Jean suggested the family saving manatees, which became the 2005 episode "Bonfire of the Manatees", and there was a The Truman Show-style notion of the characters discovering their lives were a TV show, which Groening rejected due to his rule "that the Simpsons never become aware of themselves as celebrities."
94 characters have speaking parts.
Series regulars Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright, Yeardley Smith, Hank Azaria and Harry Shearer, Marcia Wallace, Pamela Hayden, Russi Taylor, Tress MacNeille and Maggie Roswell reprised their roles for the film, as did Joe Mantegna for Fat Tony. Albert Brooks plays Russ Cargill, Green Day and Tom Hanks play themselves.
Minnie Driver recorded the part of a patronizing grievance counselor in a scene that was cut, as were Edward Norton, Isla Fisher and Erin Brockovich's scenes, and Kelsey Grammer's as Sideshow Bob.
Hans Zimmer provided the score, ahead of regular composer Alf Clausen.

Marketing and release

Homer Simpson sitting on his couch in a Superman t-shirt and briefs in the teaser trailer that debuted on March 31 2006.

A teaser trailer for the film was attached to the film Ice Age: The Meltdown from March 31 2006 onwards; the same trailer was then broadcast during the April 2 episode of The Simpsons, "Million Dollar Abie".
In July 2006, two clips of early, black and white, unfinished animatic footage from the film were shown to audiences during a Simpsons panel at Comic-Con 2006, with a third animatic clip being released on the The Simpsons The Complete Ninth Season DVD boxset.
A 1½-minute-long trailer was then shown on November 12, 2006, immediately after the second act of The Simpsons episode "G.I. (Annoyed Grunt)".
Another 1½-minute trailer appeared on The Sun newspaper's website on December 11, 2006.
On the February 14 2007, episode of American Idol, footage was shown of the contestants attending a private screening where they were shown an early preview of the first theatrical trailer. The same trailer was then shown during The Simpsons episode "Springfield Up" on February 18, 2007, and was made available online shortly afterwards.
A short TV spot was then aired during the episode "You Kent Always Say What You Want".

Marge and Homer look at the silo in their back yard in the animatic included on the season 9 DVD set.

McFarlane Toys will released a line of action figures based on the film, these include Ned Flanders and Bart looking over a rock at a character that is covered by a "Top Secret Character" logo. Others include Bart skateboarding naked having been dared by Sherri and Terri, Homer and his pet pig, and Itchy & Scratchy in "Presidential Politics". Also a series of "movie mayhem" figures, depicting the family in a cinema, were released.
The Simpsons Game was released to coincide with the film's DVD release.
Samsung released a special Simpsons Movie phone, and Microsoft will released a limited edition Simpsons Movie Xbox 360.
Other merchandise that was released includes a The Simpsons Movie donut-shaped stress reliever, as well as a badge pack.
As a promotion for the film, eleven 7-Eleven stores across America will be transformed into Kwik-E-Marts, and sell Squishees, Buzz Cola and Krusty-O's Cereal.
The film is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America for "irreverent humor throughout". The rating had been expected by the production staff.
Fox held a competition between sixteen Springfields across the United States to host the American premiere, with Springfield, Vermont being selected as the winner.
Test screenings were held in Portland, Oregon and Tempe, Arizona.
The film made a total of $526,417,972 at the box-office.
The film garnered an 89% freshness rating on critical site Rotten Tomatoes.
At the 2007 Mlb allstar game homer announced the starting lineups and saying something funny about each player. Like when he said "Chase Utley, Wait Why would I wan't to do that?"

Cultural references

File:Happyfeetgrandtheft.jpg

Happy Feet and Grand Theft Auto reference.

Titanic: Green Day play "Nearer, My God, to Thee" on violins as their barge sinks, a reference to the film.
Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery: When Bart is riding his skateboard naked, different passing objects are constantly covering his genitalia, a nod to similar techniques used in the film.
Disney: Homer and Marge's love scene parodies many Disney films, with Disney-style animals helping them undress. Also, Bart, while wearing Disney-style ears, impersonates Mickey Mouse on the train, calling himself "the mascot of an evil corporation".
Grand Theft Auto: Homer plays Grand Theft Walrus, an allusion to the video game series.
Happy Feet: In the above game, his character shoots a tap-dancing penguin in reference to the film.
Spider-Man (1967 TV series): The "Spider-Pig" song is a parody of the theme song of the 1967 Spider-Man cartoon.
An Inconvenient Truth: The name of Lisa's lecture, An Irritating Truth, is a play on Al Gore's documentary.
Full Metal Jacket: The bomb disposal robot was based on Vincent D'Onofrio's character Leonard "Pyle" Lawrence, who commits suicide in a similar way.
Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi: At the end of the film, the crowd's celebration is similar to the conclusion of the final Star Wars film, with Carl performing the exact same hand gestures as Lando Calrissian.
The Lord of the Rings: An Orc appears in the mob scene.
Hillary Clinton: The former Democratic Presidential candidate appears as Itchy's vice president.

External links

The Simpsons Movie Official website