Lyris Lite :: The Simpsons Movie on Blu-ray: filtered (oh, and the movie is a train wreck)

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So, tonight I had the chance to watch THE SIMPSONS MOVIE on BD, on the big screen. I actually disliked this film a lot more than I thought I would, because I love the original episodes of the TV series and thought that, even if the film wasn't great, I could pass the 85 minutes fairly easily. The original 20-minute episodes were by no means good animation (in fact, the animation became more rigidly constructed and sterile as the years passed - way before the writing went belly-up and the show became a stage for walk-on celebrity roles), but they were good TV.

In its new movie form, The Simpsons is neither good animation, nor is it a good film. I think that it epitomises a lot of what's wrong with the American animation business today. 15 writers - FIFTEEN - all helped to create this bloated monstrosity, which probably explains why, on a written level, it's all over the place. After all, more is better, right? Well, no. There are so many unexplored avenues and pointless inclusions - hey, let's have Lisa get a boyfriend and have Green Day and Tom Hanks appear in guest roles for no specific reason, and let's explore real-world issues without actually making them funny. Let's not forget some irritatingly self-referential gags and a pop culture reference or two which I don't need to repeat. Oh, and it has some cracking examples of writerspeak as well.

Seeing as The Simpsons was never geared towards making the most of the animated art form, I think it's safe to say that it's been successful thanks to entertaining story set-ups and, amongst other things, the fact that it's funny. The film isn't. More maddeningly still, $75 million was spent on this, and to be frank it's difficult to see where it's gone. It's not in the writing, it's certainly not in the farmed-out animation, and hell, even the voice acting doesn't seem to excel at anything. Yes, Fox and Gracie Films have dragged the rotting carcass of THE SIMPSONS into the theatre and paraded it around on an 8-foot screen.

So since we're in a cheery mood, how does the Blu-ray Disc look? Well, it looks passable. Yep, only passable. The Simpsons Movie has been filtered, so the maximum amount of detail present in the source material is not realised on this release, and high frequency parts of the frame contain some pretty nasty ringing - which will likely be made worse by the scaler in your setup if you aren't watching on Full HD 1920x1080 equipment. The transfer will likely please a lot of people because, in every other area, there's nothing really wrong with it - it's from an all-digital source so there's no dirt or noise of any sort to upset people. It looks good. But that's not the issue - 99% of this movie is, by no means difficult from a compression standpoint, and Blu-ray Disc gives the compressionists the best part of a 50 gigabyte disc - and incredibly high bit-rates - to play with, so it shouldn't have looked good. It should have looked perfect. (NB: a 1080p downloadable trailer was released onto the web earlier this year that lacked the ringing - yes, a downloadable trailer). That, to me, implies that this detail-removing process is simply part of the authoring houses' workflow and that just about everything is run through it regardless. Yes, a detail removing filter, on a HIGH DEFINITION disc format.

Interestingly, the Futurama (yay!!!) teaser trailer at the start of the disc has escaped the filter and looks better than the film itself does. Disappointing? Oh yes. Let's celebrate mediocrity, everyone!

...I actually thought The Simspons Movie was actually 50 times better than the last 5 seasons of the TV series, and was really good, all things considered.

I thought the "Lisa's Boyfriend" scenes should have been deleted from the film, but it was really the only criticism I had at all. I thought the rest of the film had a rather tight plot, great humor, and overall everythign a SImpson's movie really should have been.

I think you're kind of over-analyzing the film and being harsher then necessary on things that were minor flubs at best rather than anything that actually "ruined" the film in any way.

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