Page Not Found - DVDfever.co.uk

Follow DVDfever.co.uk

WP Twitter Auto Publish Powered By : XYZScripts.com

Dom Robinson reviews

The Simpsons: Complete Series 1

Distributed by

Cert:
Cat.no: 20146 DVD
Running time: 334 minutes
Year: 1990
Pressing: 2001
Region(s): 2, 4, PAL
Chapters: 78 plus extras
Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
Languages: English
Subtitles: 5 languages
Fullscreen: 4:3
16:9-Enhanced: No
Macrovision: Yes
Disc Format: 3 `*` DVD 9
Price: £39.99
Extras: Four original scripts, Out-takes, Documentary: "The Making of the Simpsons: America's First Family", Early Sketch Gallery, Foreign Language Clips, ABC News Special, Simpsons short, Audio commentary

Directors:

David Silverman, Wesley Archer, Gregg Vanzo, Kent Butterworth, Rich Moore and Brad Bird.

Creator:

Matt Groening

Developed by:

James L. Brooks, Matt Groening & Sam Simon

Cast:

Homer: Dan Castellaneta
Marge: Julie Kavner
Bart: Nancy Cartwright
Lisa: Yeardley Smith
Principal Skinner: Harry Shearer
plus Marcia Wallace, Hank Azaria, Christopher Collins, Susan Blu, Jo Ann Harris, Pamela Hayden, Sam McMurray, Russi Taylor and many more...

Once upon a time.. well, eleven years ago, the BBC passed on their chance to show The Simpsons, a cartoon that was to become one of the best TV programmes ever made. Yes, it's a cartoon but it's not just for kids no matter what Channel 4's compilation show might say. Packed with slapstick, film and TV references, as well as the occasional adult humour that can still be got away with before the watershed, it's a programme that works on so many levels for both children and adults alike and really does have a laugh a minute.

Back in its early days since graduating from playing as filler material on The Tracey Ullman Show, which the BBC also clipped so as just to retain her content, the animation was more crude - and Homer had a much deeper voice - but it still works perfectly in its own way. When the episodes were shown on Sky they used to censor them, but from around early 2001 they began to show them uncut.

There are thirteen episodes on this DVD boxset:

Simpsons Roasting On A Open Fire: The debut show and Christmas has arrived for the Simpson family. It's set to be a big one with stacks of money saved up - that gets spent on having Bart's tattoo removed (D'oh!).

With the lack of a Christmas bonus this year from Homer's job as safety inspector at the nuclear power plant, he has to take a second job as a Santa at the mall but the meagre wages force him to place a bet at the dog track and that's where they meet the newest member of the family, Santa's Little Helper.

Bart the Genius: The opening few minutes of most episodes have little to do with the rest of it and this one starts the trend with the Scrabble scene where Bart scores big by cheating with his word "Kwyjibo".

Move on to the school and his dishonesty continues when he swaps papers with Martin the school swot and winds up with a Mensa-style IQ and is placed at a special school with brainiacs who have class discussions about whether free will is an illusion, but Bart confesses to his crime when a science experiment goes a little ka-ka and turns him green!

Homer's Odyssey: Bart and his school friends go on a class visit to the nuclear power plant and he wants to show off how good his father is. Alas, Homer cocks it up and gets the sack.

This becomes one of those episodes where Homer goes off on a crusade and after trying to commit suicide on a bridge, a close call with traffic makes him demand a stop sign. This continues until you can't look anywhere BUT see a street sign.

There's No Disgrace Like Home: An instant classic here. Too much family squabbling at Mr Burns' annual picnic means they have much to learn about getting along and see an offer they can't refuse when Dr. Marvin Monroe's clinic provides shock therapy that's bound to work. If it doesn't, then their $250 fee will be reimbursed and doubled.

As the family are placed in chairs wired up to each other, disagreements can be expressed by pressing that person's buzzer. Hit the buzzer and you throw an electric shock in their direction. The results are... well, see for yourself.

Do not try this at home...

Bart The General: A scuffle with Nelson the bully after a cupcake incident, causing blood to exit his nose, leads to a showdown after school and Bart's got no chance of winning unless a plan of action and advice from Grandpa Simpson are implemented.

Good fights evil when the cavalry deploys 200 water-filled balloons that each say "Happy Birthday" on the side.

Moaning Lisa: "Lisa refuses to play dodgeball because she is sad." is the letter sent home with her from school as everything is getting her down. She finds solace in playing her sax outside on the bridge with local jazz musician Bleeding Gums Murphy.

Also, here, Homer gets endlessly thrashed at a video boxing game by Bart and goes to the local arcade to get some tips and is just about to win his final rematch against the lad when... (that would be telling!)

You can also spot in this episode, the moment where Homer sits in front of the TV eating pork rinds, which was replayed over and over again in One Fish, Two Fish, Blowfish, Blue Fish (Series 2, episode 11) after Homer faces a near-death experiences and then vows to live the rest of his life to the limit, because that is as exciting as it gets for him, but whatever floats your boat.

Call of the Simpsons: Flanders has a caravan, so Homer must have one too. Not being able to afford "The Ultimate Behemoth", they choose something a little more modest to go camping with - until it falls off the edge of a cliff.

Left to their own devices, Maggie calms a growling bear with her pacifier and Homer and Bart stretch out 'au naturel', the former being mistaken for Bigfoot on the evening news. Imagine the marking possibilities...

The Telltale Head: Told in flashback, Bart and Homer incur the wrath of the townsfolk when they're cornered holding the head of the brass statue erected in honour of the town's founder, Jebediah Springfield.

There is a story behind it which they have to tell in order to convince everyone into NOT killing them and it centres around falling in with the wrong crowd.

Hmm... not much going on in there.

Life on the Fast Lane: It's Marge's 34th birthday and while they're out dining, everyone buys her useful presents except for Homer who buys her a new bowling ball, even inscribed with his name on it.
Determined to make the best of things she gets assistance from the lane's occupier next door, a French man called Jacques which starts to develop into an affair, but is eventually resolved in a take-off of An Officer and a Gentleman.
Homer's Night Out: This episode starts with a bathroom scene very much reminiscent of the camerawork used in Scorsese's 1991 remake of Cape Fear.
Homer makes an arse of himself at a party where a belly dancer provides the entertainment, unaware that the rest of his family are eating out next door. With his spy camera, Bart takes a photo, copies it and sends it around his school, but before long is gets around the whole town.
The Crepes of Wrath: I love the start of this episode as it's another Homer classic. Here, he skids on Bart's skateboard, crashes down the stairs and has to listen to Bart's Krusty doll winding down, watch as the dog licks him and Maggie crawls over his face, all because of a bad back.
Like many episodes, there are two concurrent themes. Bart is sent to France on an exchange student program where he's not exactly made to feel at home and his temporary replacement attracts a lot of attention from the local constabulary.
Krusty Gets Busted: Krusty The Klown has a show on kids TV in the afternoon so he's the last person who you'd expect to rob the Kwik-E-Mart armed with a gun, but who else looks so weird?
Bart and Lisa smell a rat and aim to prove his innocence. Being such devotees of his show, they spot the evidence that evaded the police and sets the real Krusty free. So, who's the real culprit? Any chance it might be his slapstick partner Sideshow Bob? (voiced by Frasier's Kelsey Grammer)
Some Enchanted Evening: Marge becomes so fed up with her family she phones Dr. Marvin Monroe's advice line for help, aiming to restore things with a lobster dinner out for her and Homer and a babysitter for the kids.
Alas, the latter turns out to be a nightmare when she turns up on "America's Most Wanted" as the Babysitter Bandit, ties them up and then they struggle to get the message across to a non-listening world.

One highlight of the show is that Bart's known for making prank calls to Moe the Bartender and fake names in this series include: "I.P. Freely", "Jock Strap" and "Al Coholic".

Suck on this.

The programme has always been made and presented in 4:3 fullscreen and once you get past the occasionally-crude animation, it mostly looks damn good, save for some backgrounds that come out in patches because it appears that the encoding isn't quite up to scratch.

Originally filmed in stereo, there aren't quite as many special effects applied here than there are in later series, but what is has been enhanced with a Dolby Digital 5.1 remix throughout the entire series. This was quite unexpected but most welcome. Even in the scenes where not much action happens, the clarity is the dialogue greatly benefits from this treatment.

The Simpsons Season 1 boxset.

All of the extras are on disc 3, apart from some of the scripts.

Never Before Seen Outtakes (5 mins): from an unaired version of Some Enchanted Evening, which has a very dodgy-looking quality to it but you easily overcome that to appreciate the rarity.
Animatic from Bart The General (2 mins): Narrated by Matt Groening and the episode's director David Silverman, this brief footage shows the basic outlines for Bart being chased and beaten up by Nelson.
The Making of The Simpsons: "America's First Family": Just a five-minute collection of interviews and show clips that showed on BBC in a much-longer show - and in 16:9 widescreen, which is cropped to 4:3 here. Hence, the clips of the series which were zoomed in to fill the 16:9 frame have been cropped at the sides, thus windowboxing them. Why couldn't we have the whole programme?
Foreign Language Clips: Clips of the show dubbed into French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese and Portuguese.
Tracey Ullman Short (2 mins): "Goodnight Simpsons" was one of the many 4-parters that bridged the advert gaps in her programme to make people return afterwards.
Albert Brooks Audio Outtakes (4 mins): As he takes on the role of Jacques in Life on the Fast Lane.
Art of the Simpsons: A one-shot look at Matt Groening's Life in Hell and some early sketches and drawings.
Scripts: For four episodes: Bart the Genius, Bart the General, Moaning Lisa and Some Enchanted Evening, each of which show the original typed pages and annotations - a warts and all look and it's what I like to see. Let's have a full book of all of these please!
Audio Commentaries: One for each episode, usually featuring creator Matt Groening along with various directors and writers.

Each episode has six chapters which is a good figure and subtitles come in 5 flavours: English for the hearing-impaired, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish.

Despite it losing slight points for picture and sound quality, it's easily worth a purchase because it's high time the Simpsons were on DVD. Now let's have all the other series made available!

FILM CONTENT PICTURE QUALITY SOUND QUALITY EXTRAS
OVERALL

[Up to the top of this page]

Page Not Found - DVDfever.co.uk

404: Page not found

Recent Posts

Archives

Categories

Tags

Pages

Follow DVDfever.co.uk

Dom Robinson reviews

The Simpsons: Complete Series 1

Distributed by

Do not try this at home...

Hmm... not much going on in there.

Suck on this.

The Simpsons Season 1 boxset.

Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2001.

404: Page not found

Recent Posts

Archives

Categories

Tags

Pages

Follow DVDfever.co.uk