"I'll teach you to laugh at something that's funny!"

It's pretty simple, really. If you know you're going to put the SO through a stressful day, make sure to give her a great evening before. That's why I chose to go with The Simpsons Movie this week.

What, you may be asking, could this movie do that would destress the SO before stressing her the next day? Well, when the next day involves 8 hours of driving and my relatives, you can understand. But I'm not here to talk about that, I'm here for the movie (we can talk about that stuff at the END of the post...)

Plot: Homer causes an environmental catastrophe in Springfield, EPA puts a biodome over the city. Springfieldians want to kill Homer, wormhole in sandtrap allows Simpsons family to escape and find refuge in Alaska. Springfield is planned to be eliminated from the map, the Simpsons (minus Homer) want to help and go back, only to be captured by EPA and put back in the dome. Homer has an epiphany and realizes that he must save Springfield to save his family and to have happiness in his life. Homer and Bart go "Strangelove" on the dome and save the town.

In my opinion, it was amazing to see The Simpsons on the big screen. Of course it's impossible to have the compact storyline of a 30-minute show spread over 90 minutes. Of course it's impossible to get every character involved in the plot (that's why they invented sequels... duh). And of course it could never live up to our expectations because they've been doing this for 20 years.

But it's still a great adventure. More than anything, it was a chance to see The Simpsons, a staple of television watching for almost everyone, do something that we had never seen them do before: attempt to be in a full-length movie. I'm pretty sure most of us could have sat down for a 4-hour Simpsons movie and would still be crying out for more. Yeah, the storyline was a little lame, and it would have been cool to have more characters involved, but that's nearly impossible, even in a 24-episode season on TV.

What was cool about it were the references to old and recent episodes, the clarity of the images on the screen, and of course, seeing Maggie saving the family once again. But what was really amazing was watching it on the HDTV and again pointing out how it's not quite a high-def picture coming out of the DVD player. But that will become a sticking point in the proverbial back of the SO in the next post, just you wait... bwa-hahaha! Later!