Nerve is something the long-gestating The Simpsons Movie has in spades, evinced by its already notorious, unapologetic, hilarious display of a certain marble sack. For the rest of it, it's more than, if not much more than, an extended episode of the television show, the picture marked by its inability to do more with the relative freedom afforded it by the cinema (compare this to the "South Park" flick) and by no more or less political verve than any single instalment of the series manages. Taking shots at the retarded response to Hurricane Katrina in its vaguely-environmentalist nods to Al Gore's newfound/long-sought-after rock stardom outside the Rose Garden, or at Cheney-as-puppet master and Hillary Clinton as someone else's vice president, doesn't require that much inspiration. Its resolution, featuring the Simpson clan again reminding how their travails are ultimately about the scar tissue we amass for the sake of holding a family together, is by now, I confess, starting to get on my nerves. In how big is its crisis (indeed, after Homer empties a silo of hog waste into Lake Springfield--which does its good deed by drowning Green Day--Springfield is quarantined from the rest of the world) and how dedicated it is to move the family outside its comfort zone while indulging in wearying in-jokes like the real location of the town, the film grates as much as it surprises. Worse, it betrays itself as the old man at the party, who's told some of his stories one time too many.

With animation amped-up enough to draw attention to itself and fits of random pop-culture that resemble "Family Guy" instead of the other way around, The Simpsons Movie isn't a disaster--it's just that its suggestion that Arnold Schwarzenegger could be President is as unsurprising as its suggestion that The Governator might be illiterate. Maybe time and cynicism have caught up with "The Simpsons"; the flipside of the Bush Administration being a boon to comics and satirists is that things are so absurd now that almost nothing we could dream of could actually be more absurd. I'd like to spend some time talking about how Ah-nuld's belligerent neo-conservatism is exactly like Bush Jr.s', but what's the point of continually potting the same fish in a barrel swiftly-shrinking? It all appears to be "feel good" satire capped with the usual message of family: the skewering of organized religion is trenchant, but it's always trenchant; the headlong naked skateboarding choreography is snickersnack, but didn't we see something like this in the Wallace & Gromit flick? "The Simpsons"' sell-by date expired a few years ago, with recent episodes, like this film, sometimes demonstrating some of the flair that made the series great--but more often demonstrating how close the show is to becoming part of the entrenched, comfortable establishment it used to rail against.-Walter Chaw (excerpted from a longer review found here)

Fox shepherds The Simpsons Movie to Blu-ray in a sparkling 2.40:1, 1080p presentation. For many, this will mark their first exposure to 2-D animation on a next-gen format (understanding of course that the film was still created on a computer), and my immediate reaction is: bring on Looney Tunes and the Disney classics! Of course, they'll never look as, well, clean as The Simpsons Movie does here; the image is flawless, the old-school MPEG-2 compression not seeming to matter one iota. I realize that's a word I tend to throw around a lot, "flawless," but I've scarcely meant it more. Please note that the opening Itchy & Scratchy cartoon is intentionally windowboxed at 1.77:1 to underscore the transition from the show's TV dimensions to CinemaScope--there is nothing wrong with the transfer. Matching the video in definition and clarity is the DTS HD 5.1 Master Lossless Audio, even though I could only access the 1.5mbps core of it. While the mix itself is a bit hemispheric (disappointingly so, given the aim to 'open up' the picture visually), stereo imaging is phenomenal, bass packs a wallop, and voices are easy to decipher no matter how outlandish they get, which isn't always the case with the series.

A surprisingly slim helping of supplements begins with two yak-tracks. The first--featuring director David Silverman, co-writers Matt Groening, James L. Brooks, Al Jean, and Mike Scully, and actors Dan Castellaneta and Yeardley Smith--is unique in that it runs 20 minutes longer than The Simpsons Movie proper, with the action pausing periodically and fading to black-and-white to allow one or more of the commentators in question to finish a train of thought. The longest freeze follows the heartbreaking wedding-video scene to accommodate an extended discussion of Brooks' gruelling perfectionism (Julie Kavner did well over 100 takes of Marge's break-up monologue--"And we used take two," Brooks quips) and the difference between acting for the show and for the film. This commentary was recorded before the movie came out, leading to much speculation on how it will be received based on test-screening responses. The second, much less engaging yakker, teaming Silverman with "sequence directors" Mike B. Anderson, Steven Dean Moore, and Rich Moore, was recorded after the film was an established hit and basically exists to assign credit to specific chunks of animation.

Also on board are six deleted scenes totalling five minutes. More or less animated to completion, these reveal an earlier, leftier incarnation of Russ Cargill (the abandonment of which, according to the commentaries, cost Burger King a fortune, since they'd already pressed the toy), Patty and Selma's expunged cameo, and "a slightly alternate ending" that brings back the mutant chipmunk for a blink-or-miss gag. A section of "Special Stuff" compiles the various promotional appearances from when The Simpsons made the rounds last summer, including Homer's "Tonight Show" monologue (2 mins.); "American Idol"-themed skits in which the family judges Simon Cowell (Homer=Simon, Lisa=Paula, and Marge=Randy) and Homer stands in for Ryan Seacrest (1 min. and 30s, respectively); and a very funny spoof of the "Let's All Go to the Lobby" jingle (20s). For what it's worth, all of the video-based extras are in HiDef--ditto the five trailers for The Simpsons Movie and pre-menu trailers for Alvin and the Chipmunks and Futurama: Bender's Big Score (itself AWOL on BD).-Bill Chambers

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