Spider pig, spider pig...

Does whatever a spider pig does. Can he swing from a web? No, because he's a pig.

We saw The Simpsons Movie last night. Thanks to the commercials being run approximately every 90 seconds whenever I turn on the tv, I've had Homer's spider pig song stuck in my head for weeks now. It wore me down. I wasn't sure I wanted to see the movie because the last few seasons of the show haven't been that funny. But we decided to go for it.
It was hilarious. For at least 75 of the 88 minutes (it's a short feature) we were laughing loudly, giggling, smiling. My face hurt by the end. The opening joke is the family's at the theater watching The Itchy and Scratchy Movie and Homer makes a stink over how stupid everyone in the audience is for paying money to watch something we can watch at home every day for free. It's a great note to get started with and it coincided with my thinking that it was weird to be watching something with so many people laughing around me when I'm used to watching it at home quietly on my couch. It turned out to be a lot of fun to have all those people laughing along.

The plot is pretty thin, but it didn't need substance. Homer falls in love with a pig ... disaster comes to Springfield. It had the great Simpsons irony and sarcasm and irrelevance and plain old silliness. It was just darned entertaining. Most of the citizens of Springfield make an appearance. There are some references to episodes, but there's also a lot that's independent to the film (I hope they make Lisa's new boyfriend a regular character on the show).

There's a PG rating and I expected a little more gratuitousness but it stayed pretty tame. We see Bart naked. Otto takes a bong hit. Marge finally gets mad enough to swear (she's earned it, she's put up with a lot over the years).

I hope now that the movie has finally been made, the writers will put their effort back into making the show funny again. Or else end The Simpsons now on a high note.

(At home now, we're alternating between singing "Grendel pig, Grendel pig" and "Spider Ellie, Spider Ellie" to ourselves.)

(Image from MTV.com.)