I won't go into some bombastic review trying to analyze the hijinks of the Simpsons, let alone that of nitwit character Homer Simpson. However, I enjoyed this episode for most of it's run time. It falls apart a little (however the story of trying to salvage a film is extremely relevant today, 20 years on - cough cough Warner Bros. Batgirl cough cough). Mel Gibson is fantastic in this episode, poking fun of himself, when necessary.
Also back-to-back, the 2nd time in 2 episodes across 2 seasons, the Simpsons have left Springfield. Might as well take them on a travelling tour at this point.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2019-05-01T03:13:46Z
[7.4/10 on a post-classic Simpsons episode] Boy does this episode feel dated. I don’t think anything tells the tale of how different this one feels in 2019 vs. how it felt in 1999 than the fact that it depicts Mel Gibson as an all-loved dose of Hollywood royalty and Robert Downey Jr. as a pariah having troubling interactions with the police. Some of that dissonance is inevitable when you anchor an episode around a celebrity playing themselves, but some of it is the episode’s cringey references to Ellen Degeneres, Judge Judy, and John Travolta with weak gags and impressions that have aged like fruit on a radiator.
And yet, this is a damn funny episode for most of its run. I rag on showrunner Mike Scully a decent amount, but one thing the guy was good at was high-risk/high-reward comedy, with lots of wild misses but also a lot of direct hits on the funny bone. Bits like the shifty-eyed dog or the action movie ending to Mr. Smith Goes to Washington revel in the absurd tone that Scully seems to love, and wring plenty of good gags out of it.
But this is also an episode with cartoony gags like Homer driving and electric car underwater, and the high concept premise of him being plucked from obscurity to make a movie with a big celebrity. Still, Scully (who penned the episode in addition to his showrunning duties) does a surprisingly good job of motivating the characters. Homer is jealous of Marge’s celebrity crush, and Mel is worried that his new stab at prestige is leaving him out of touch with truth-telling everymen (“you know, morons”) like Homer. It’s basic, but it helps ground the utter zaniness in which this episode lives.
All the while, there’s some hit-or-miss riffs on the excesses of the movie-making business and Hollywood in general (as both an institution and a locale). Sometimes, the episode includes hilarious bits like the new ending, which work as a satire of over the top action films, and the executives here are sketched much better than the ones in season 12’s “Day of the Jackanapes”, but then you have “Saving Irene Ryan” and the whole ridiculous car chase at the end that just feel strained and fall flat.
Overall, if you can get past how the public’s perception of Mel Gibson has changed over the past 20 years (and hey, I’m Jewish, so no judgment if you can’t), this is still a mostly-funny, if insubstantial series of riffs on the movie business), even if it goes off the rails in story, reality, and characterization, as all Scully episodes are destined to do eventually.