Episode 18 - Any Given Sundance
4 January 2009
Review
Synopsis: Lisa makes a movie for film class and Principal Skinner encourages her to make a documentary about her family. She does and she enters it for the Sundance Film Festival. The family goes as do Skinner and Chalmers who produced the film. The festival loves it but the Simpsons family is reviled and Lisa feels guilty. They all get over it though when Nelson’s film steals the festival buzz the next day. The Good: Being at a film festival is a new one for The Simpsons. Marge’s prudish reaction to all the independent films fits her character nicely. Chalmers and Skinner usually provide a few laughs together. Here they have a clever one which plays into the Simpsons traditional structure. The two of them are thrown out of Lisa’s film and the bouncer puts them on a sled and kicks them down a hill. They approach a Mormon church and shoot out of its doors with a handful of brides each. Chalmers asks if this can be real and one bride tells him no it’s a dream they actually landed in a sandbank. Which they then cut to. It’s a clever moment. The Bad: Lisa’s intellect exposing her family or upsetting them or annoying them in some way is a story we have seen many times before. There is no entertaining new twist on it and it is not a funny episode. Even Nelson’s tragic story has been examined in more than a couple of episodes. If you know all about independent films or just Jake Jarmusch you may like it more than the average viewer. Jake Jarmusch disappearing is one of those silly moments which annoy me because if you want us to care about characters then make them seem at least a bit real. Best Joke: Superintendent Chalmers wants to enter Lisa’s film into the Sundance festival. “If Lisa’s movie gets in, we won’t just be the school with the highest hamster mortality rate.” We see a framed picture on the wall with twelve pictured hamsters and the title “In Memoriam.” Chalmers adds in as flippant and brief a way as possible “Ah, so young.” The Bottom Line: A plot you have seen too many times with too few jokes to make it fun to watch.
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