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The Simpsons movie is pretty funny and everything, but it's a major disappointment on many levels. Mediocrity in a project that has reached moments of culture-influencing excellence is sort of depressing. It’s rare to meet someone under 50 who hasn't been touched by The Simpsons. Jon Stewart quotes Mr.Burns' famous directive, "release the hounds' and even serial killer Paul Bernardo cited The Simpsons as one of his favourite shows. You know it's an influential show when both you and a serial killer can list it as one of your favourites. That's the power of television; bringing people together. Awesome.

The movie is focused almost compulsively on the triangular-complex of Homer, Bart and Flanders, who is really Homer's doppleganger (if you don't know what that means, you haven't been to university and therefore, could you kindly leave?).

Usually the butt of many choice jabs at Christianity and all that is hypocritical about it, Flanders, here, is pretty much left alone. It's almost as if the creators behind The Simpsons are starting to find Homer less and less charming. There seems to be an undercurrent of contempt for Homer and a slight favoring of Flanders as a responsible, kind, patient father. Bart thinks so, too. The tone of Bart's loathing for Homer, as a father is, at times, kind of uncomfortable. Not as bad as with me and my father, but I digress..

It's as if, the cumulative effect of Homer's pathological behavior has reached a critical mass and we, along with Bart, find it hard to cut Homer much slack.

There is an overall darkness to The Simpsons movie which centers its plot around a fairly strong political stance on environmental issues (which to be honest, I’m getting a little tired of hearing about all the time, and just because i say that it doesn't make me a right wing asshole. I just hate the 'jump on the bandwagon', cause du jour thing. Sure the planet's in trouble but do I need to hear about it from a cartoon?).

So,the message here is that people like Homer; selfish, narcissistic, apathetic and indifferent to the sufferings of others are destroying the planet. I can agree with that,but still,I could have used more Apu.

The biggest failure of The Simpsons movie is how many brilliant side characters are left out. I don't even watch The Simpsons for The Simpsons themselves, I watch for Apu, Moe, Comic Book Store guy, Disco Stu, Krusty,Burns, Sideshow Bob (not one reference to him!) and other peripheral characters. I wish the makers of The Simpsons movie had followed some lesser known side characters rather then focusing so myopically on the most tired elements of the show...Homer, Bart, Lisa, Marge and Maggie.

Azed Majeed

Michael Moore is such a strange paradoxical figure. On the one hand, you applaud his efforts to unmask the largely invisible corporate engineers who, let’s face it, are not very good human beings, on the other hand, there is something self-righteous, condescending and hypocritical about Moore, or at least that’s the general perception of him.

It’s funny how we find it nearly impossible to separate the character in a film with the actor, but we do this at our own peril. We should all realize at this point that, even though these are ostensibly ‘documentaries' (whatever that means these days), Moore is still ‘playing’ a character. Maybe he doesn’t even realize this, but it is not really necessary for him to intentionally create a character, it happens through the style and consistency of his work. Michael Moore is playing “Michael Moore” and as such it is totally legitimate to critique his character, as one would critique the work of any actor/writer/director.

Okay so in a very real sense the real project of Michael Moore’s work is the creation of “Michael Moore”, the character (I will use MM for the character), he is a self-creator, using a form of hybrid personal diary/social documentary format which stretches both genres to the breaking point. This may be why we feel like he often presents his subjective view as an objective fact; it is the uneasy mix of personal opinion unfolding in a realm we usually understand will be neutral and balanced. But, that is the character’s way in these tales of social woe and injustice. MM is an everyman, naive yet alarmingly perceptive and, at bottom, he’s a good person who cares for his neighbor and fights for justice. His political message has more to do with compassion and empathy then with factual data and political spin. This is the point.

On the other hand…

…Michael Moore, the writer/creator/producer/director/author/pundit/celebrity, is a variation of his character, "MM". MM is a classic social antagonist in the mold of 60’s radicals who have a tough love stance on American political critique. MM is the good American, in the positive sense of the term, a clever, passionate, caring citizen who follows the “golden rule” of treat others as you would have them treat you. Often people attack Michael Moore for his leftist ideology, but I would argue that he is more a Christian than a Marxist. In this sense, Michael Moore can champion the poor and marganilzed while living high off the hog himself and never think twice about it. He can play fast and loose with facts and editing because things have to be made to fit his etched in stone notions of ideology and social malaise. He is a Christo-leftist polemicist and he is on a mission.

So how do we reconcile the two Michael Moore’s? We can’t.

In Sicko, his latest film, there’s a telling moment where MM decides to give monetary aid to the guy who runs a web site called, “Moore Watch”. The guy who has a major hate on for all things MM posts a note on his site to the effect that since his wife needs serious medical attention, he can no longer run the website. This prompts Moore to anonymously donate the $12,000.00 to pay for the wife’s medical procedures. Okay, this is a generous act. It's a Christian act, to say the least, to come to aid of your sworn enemy in his/her time of need. At the same time, one winces slightly that Moore included this information in the film. Now his gesture ceases to be anonymous, now it seems like a political opportunity, staged to make a point, transforming the charitable into an act of narcissism. That, in a nutshell, is the paradox of Michael Moore and…MM.

Azed Majeed

Many years ago a friend of mine told me that the novel as an artform had reached its apotheosis with the publication of James Joyce's Ulysses. My friend went on to say that with the publication of Ulysses, the novel could be taken no further, in essence the novel was dead and anything that came after was merely a repetition. Basically, the idea of creating an orignal work of fiction was no longer possible because the novel had "jumped the shark" as the kids say these days. I have been wondering if film, as an artform, has also "jumped the shark". Is there anything new out there? When I say 'new' I mean something that pushes the meduim of film to another level, not merely some innovative twist in storytelling. I suppose the only way to break this down is to try to locate the last frontier push in cinema. When was the last time you saw something that felt new or fresh in cinema?