This week’s episode brought back Bart’s Angry Dad franchise and transformed it into movie format. The episode had a fun story, good gags and nice guest appearances.
The plot goes like this. Bart’s web comic Angry Dad, a comic based on Homer’s constant anger, is made into a feature film. After a poor response from the testing audience, Bart decides to turn Angry Dad into a short animated feature. Awards and accolades from every source follow, and Bart and Homer vie for the spotlight at each award show.
The best part of the episode was the various random animated shorts that were shown throughout the show. These ranged from the great Itchy & Scratchy episode homaging Kung Fu cinema to the nominated short films alongside Angry Dad; they were all great. In particular, the “Mixar” cartoon, The Condiments was awesome. It was a good take on Toy Story, with 3D jars of peanut butter and bottles of ketchup coming to life.
The other films ranged from black and white anti-war cartoons to a Simpson version of Wallace and Gromit. All of these styles really added variety and made the episode memorable.
The episode’s strength was also its weakness. The episode seemed very short, and the clips of different films took up a good deal of the episode. There were also a lot of dead parts of the episode where nothing happened. This made it seem that the episode didn’t really have much of a story. This is just a small criticism, but it would have been nice for the actual plot of the episode to have matched the quality of all the animated shorts.
This episode also had several guest appearances, some good, others not so good. Russell Brand and Halle Berry were presenters at the award shows featured during the episode, and didn’t really bring any substance. Ricky Gervais was also present in the episode, and his conversations with bartenders and award show seat fillers were great. Nick Park, the creator of Wallace and Gromit, was also a good addition to the episode.
There weren’t very many jokes in this episode, but the Oscar segment near the end of the episode was one enormous jab at the Academy Awards. The episode nailed everything wrong with award shows, from their stupid banter to their excruciating length. It didn’t make me laugh out loud, but it was a great roast of the Oscars.
Overall, I liked this episode, but it had many weaknesses. All of the segments featuring different styes of animation were great to watch, but they were a double edged sword, as they highlighted the shortcomings of the overall story. The guest appearances were mixed, but the episode made great fun of the Academy Awards, just in time for the Oscars.
