"The Simpsons," Kalamazoo College, and Falling for the Past

(Ben's Note: Normally for "Movie Popcorn" posts I'll be blogging in a more traditional "movie review" mode, but since "The Simpson's Movie" has more personal significance for me, and because of the nature in which I saw it, I felt it more significant to discuss the film in the following terms).

The past can be a weird place to reside for a few days, especially when coincidence and nostalgia are invited in by outside sources. The past I'm talking about? The four years I spent living in Kalamazoo as a student at Kalamazoo College. The coincidental nostalgia? "The Simpson's Movie" arriving at theatres the same weekend my college roommate, Jared, and I traveled to Kalamazoo to re-live some of the good 'ole days.

On Thursday, Jared and I checked into Kalamazoo's new Comfort Inn, located at the base of Academy Street (where K-College begins), next door to our old favorite watering hole (which serves the best nachos in Michigan) the Up and Under, and directly on the spot where the scariest motel in Kalamazoo used to sit (the Downtowner, which had everything from hourly to weekly rates). Jared and I spent Thursday and Friday reliving moments which still seem recent even though more than half a decade has gone on down the road: playing Frisbee golf and dodging campus security, wandering through Tiffany's Wine and Spirits perusing wine we still can't afford, eating ribs at The Corner Bar, getting nachos at Rugger's, stopping by Munchie Mart and Jimmy John's late at night, experiencing pitcher night at Waldo's, eating the breakfast of champions at Nina's Cafe, and, perhaps most shockingly, watching "The Simpson's Movie" at the Kalamazoo 10 movie theatre.

Well, nostalgia can do some messed up things to a person. It can gloss over bad moments in the past (sophomore year comes quickly to mind), and turn a world of experience into the walking scene in "Reservoir Dogs"; pretty darn cool. So, what did my latest experience in Kalamazoo teach me? That Jared and I still suck at Frisbee golf, we still eat too much junk food, that Waldo's is no longer all that much fun without anyone we know there, and that the breakfast of champions at Nina's is now too big and almost 10 dollars. What else? Oh, yeah. "The Simpson's Movie" doesn't need artificial nostalgia to be important. The greatest television show of my college experience turned out to be the movie event of my summer. Go figure.

During my sophomore year of college in 2000-2001, Jared, our best friend Mohammed, and I watched (and taped) between 2-4 episodes of "The Simpson's" every weeknight. "The Simpson's" appeared on two different television stations four times between 5 and 8 pm. If the boys and I timed it right, we could tape two episodes before dinner at the cafeteria and one more afterwards. I still have those 6 VHS tapes of "Simpson's" episodes sitting in my den. It was the TV show we watched the most, quoted the most, and laughed with the most.

It was also the show we complained about the most. Even in 2001, we said the show had peaked years earlier. Everyone agreed that the best shows occured when Conan O'Brien was a writer, from 1991-1994 (the show was actually at its best from 1993 to 1996). Mohammed and I always said that "The Simpson's" before 1996 was a great television show, afterwards it was just a hilarious collection of jokes. It was the kind of discussion only college students have, and only college students care about. The complaints we had have all been heard before: that Homer had gotten too stupid, that the plots had gotten too random and strange, that they had run out of ideas, that Bart was marginalized. Yada yada yada, and it was all probably true. The show still exists as the last remaining original television program I cared about when I was 11-years-old (unbelievable, really), but it hasn't been important since I watched those re-runs everyday in 2001.

Well, "The Simpson's Movie" is important. And, more significantly, it is great.

That the movie would be funny and have a bunch of laughs was a given (even the television show still provides that in spades). That the movie would also be heartfelt and contain a plot that actually makes sense was the pleasant surprise, popping from the film like a lightning strike straight out of 1995. Here was a "Simpson's" that, as Mohammed would say, was a television show again, only as, strangely enough, a movie. I loved every moment of it, for all the best reasons: because it was playing at my all-time favorite theatre, because it reminded me of my college years, because it was great.

Jared and I might no longer be able to enjoy an evening at Waldo's the way we used to, but for one glorious afternoon we were able to enjoy an original "Simpson's" episode in the way, even in 2000, we thought we'd never experience again.

If Mohammed had been there, it would have been perfect. Forget nostalgia. Even in the land of the past, "The Simpson's Movie" arrived right on time.