The Simpsons take time out to relax before the release of their new movie.
What's the greatest trailer ever made? My vote would go to the one for the first Men In Black movie, which in two minutes promised the greatest laugh riot of all time.
Inevitably, MIB suffered a bit from "raised expectations syndrome": when you go into a film primed for something special, often it turns into a let down. (The converse is also true; the best films tend to those for which you aren't expecting much.) MIB didn't help itself by including in its trailer what turned out to be the main climactic scene of Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith shooting down the flying saucer. That's like giving away your best joke.
Are the people behind the Simpsons movie going down the same road? Now that the trailers are out and proud on the internet, we can start to form a judgment. Their trailer follows the same template as the first South Park movie teasers which, if you cast your mind back to the heady days of 1999, featured a computer-designed model of what turned out to be Cartman doing his idiotic German dance. Like the South Park boys, the Simpsons' creators are making a virtue out of their "old-fashioned" animation.
But the question trying the minds of the Simpsons faithful is simply this: can the masters of the half-hour animated sitcom really stretch to 80 minutes plus? Especially as, over the years, The Simpsons has become more and more cavalier with its demands of conventional narrative; in the last few years, each episode has come to resemble an extended satire on clichés of character motivation and plot development. (There's a hint of that in the American trailer, when Homer bellows "Time to save my family" shortly before being flattened by the wrecking ball.)
Never let it be said, though, that hype can't be part of the process that makes a movie more pleasurable (an extended drool, if you will, before the steak gets shoved in front of you). The richness of the Simpsons' gag-writing is what's sustained the series over the years; I can't think of an episode I've seen that hasn't left me amazed with at least one moment of brilliance. Let's just hope they don't mess it up on the big screen.
