The Simpsons - Film Festival

Fans of The Simpsons were finally blessed late last year with the first series of the seminal necessity of life making its way to little shiny disc. With the prospect of at least twelve more seasons to come, and a release rate which makes the inhabitants of the Springfield Retirement Castle look positively sprightly by comparison, it appeared that those awaiting their favourite episodes from later seasons would be required to summon up the patience of a Flanders.

And so to a kind of/sort of interim solution. For years now VHS users have been able to grab four episode, seemingly vaguely thematic and dartboard-compiled compilations everywhere from the usual video outlets to supermarkets, and The Simpsons Film Festival sees this idea employed for the first time in the local DVD market.

As the title would suggest to all but those out there named Cletus, this one sees a collision of some of the film-themed episodes from various seasons. To be more specific these are...

Beyond Blunderdome (season 11):
What, has Homer become eco-friendly? Fear not, oh worshippers of the great god Duff, he’s just taking a test drive to score a free gift – which ends up being tickets to a test screening of the new Mel Gibson flick, a remake of Mr Smith Goes to Washington. The H man is a tad jealous at Marge’s obvious infatuation with Mr Gibson, so slams the film. Mel, believing Homer’s response to be the only honest opinion given, enlists him to help rework his creation...

"Boring! At least the Jimmy Stewart version had that giant rabbit that ran the savings and loan." - Homer J. Simpson

Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie (season 4):
It’s parent/teacher night time again, that special moment of the year when poor Marge gets an earful of what mayhem Bart has most recently wreaked at school. Realising he needs stricter discipline, Homer’s lackadaisical attitude doesn’t exactly help matters – until Magaggie goes for a drive when El Barto was supposed to be watching her. Homer lays down the most effective punishment he could ever inflict upon his son – banning Bart from seeing the brand new Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie (with 53% new footage!) - for life.

"Oh no, Beta!" - Snake (after ripping off somebody's VCR)

22 Short Films About Springfield (season 7):
Bart and Milhouse are hangin’ on the overpass, spitting on passing cars and pondering whether Springfield’s inhabitants have any interesting stories to tell. And so we get a rapid-fire peek into the lives of many of the town’s inhabitants, from our favourite family through all manner of regular and not so regular cast members – even the Capital City Goofball makes a return visit! Will Lisa de-gum her hair? Will Smithers survive? Will Barney pay his bar tab? Will Wiggum and Snake survive a visit to Herman’s store? Will Milhouse finally get to pee? And will the producers of the show get sued by Quentin Tarantino?

"For the next five minutes I'm going to party like it's on sale for $19.99!" - Apu Nahasapeemapetilon

A Star is Burns (season 6):
With Springfield voted the least popular city in the USA, fears of a lack of tourism prompt a town meeting to find a solution. Marge suggests a film festival, the townsfolk agree with her (for once) and the search is on for judges. Cue Jay Sherman, or The Critic, who jumps at the chance when a quick escape from a rather pissed off Rainier Wolfcastle is required. It seems most everybody in town is making their own film – in the end who will win, Apu, Moe, Hans Moleman, Barney or Senor Burns? (Trivia: The dodgy cross promotion employed here due to pressure by Fox so incensed Matt Groening that he demanded to have his name removed from the credits. Not a bad move...)

"Uh-oh, I smell another cheap cartoon crossover..." - Bartholomew J. Simpson

With episodes from as early as 1992, and as recently as 1999, it's a given before even loading something like this up that things are going to vary a bit visually. And they do. However, while the animated introduction is definitely showing its age, both in quality and animation style, the rest of the episodes presented here still scrub up reasonably well - and infinitely better than this reviewer has ever seen them when broadcast on TV. There are occasional speckles within all episodes, and a tell-tale juddering on most pans which gives away the series' NTSC origins, but in all things are nicely colourful, reasonably detailed and generally quite spiffy.

These four 1.33:1 episodes come to us on a dual layered disc, however the layer change seems to have been placed between episodes, so doesn't rear its ugly head - just as it should be in a case like this. It also should be noted that the contents appear to be entirely uncut, so those used to a certain Australian television station's airings of these episodes may stumble across a few scenes hitherto unseen - especially in Itchy & Scratchy: the Movie.

There's no DD 5.1 remix on offer here as afforded the first season box set, however the standard surround encoded Dolby Digital Stereo mix does a pretty supoib job regardless. Rear ambience abounds from the surrounds at various times, and they are also used nicely to flesh out much of Alf Clausen's always wonderful score work. Dialogue levels are all up to par, there are no obvious glitches, and needless to say lip synch is as good as you can expect from a cartoon series.

A rather disappointingly dull and flat, extremely perfunctory unanimated menu has but one bonus goodie to offer. It's a two minute 38 second featurette that is a sort of tribute to fish-fetishist Troy McClure (and the late Phil Hartman who provided his voice, who, as far as we can ascertain, wasn't a fish-fetishist). This is mainly made up of scenes taken from the episode A Fish Called Selma, but also features Troy's appearances from Lisa the Vegetarian ("Two minus three = negative fun!") and Duffless ("Alice's Adventures Through the Windshield Glass").

Sadly this is no full season box set, nor anything that comes anywhere near to being even vaguely as desirable - it isn't even by any means the greatest selection of episodes. But for diehard fans of The Simpsons this will be a small yet necessary interim purchase while we count the grey hairs to the next box set release, even if many would argue that by having a later episode directly followed by an earlier one the steady decline in writing quality of the show over the years is made ever so much more apparent.

Still, regardless quite simply this is more of The Simpsons on DVD, it features decent enough video and audio quality, and really that’s about all fans will want or need to know. Get thee to the Android’s Dungeon now!