Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Beyond Blunderdome (S11, E01-227)

That dog is shifting its eyes!  Its gotta be evil!
Plot Summary
Homer and Marge earn a pair of movie screening tickets after 'trying' out an electric car.  The tickets are for an advanced screening of a remake to "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington", starring Mel Gibson whom Marge openly admires.  Everyone at the screening loves the movie, except Homer who can't stand the two hours of talking and zero minutes of action.  Each viewer is asked to write in a response form, and Homer writes what ends up being the only negative review.  Mel Gibson himself reads the reviews and, already regretting doing the actionless film, validates his fears from Homer's singular review.  Looking to 'improve' the film for his liking, Mel goes to the Simpson house to have Homer help him out.

The family flies with Mel to Hollywood.  As Marge and the kids tour around the area, Homer and Mel get to work on the film, but progress is limited.  Homer's ideas, such as speeding up the opening scene and putting in an evil dog who shifts his eyes to let viewers know its evil, aren't well received by Mel and he's about to have Homer leave.  However, Homer then gets to the "filibuster" scene in the movie, the one most other people like, and claims it to be the weakest moment of the film.  Subsequently, Homer and Mel get to work to make the scene more to their liking.

The two screen the new ending to studio executives.  The new ending has Mr. Smith impale the congressman with a flag, a guy whose part Homer is playing toss Mr. Smith a machine gun so he can shoot up the others, and the beheading of the president.  When the obviously disgusted executives threaten to burn the only copy of the new ending, Mel grabs it and he and Homer make their escape.  The executives give chase and stay on the two, despite Homer and Mel giving their best effort to evade them.  Homer tries one last idea: mooning the executives ala Braveheart, but that only results in the executives' car crashing into Homer's ass.

Still, somehow, the new ending makes it to print, and is shown nationwide.  Homer and Mel attend opening night, but find the crowd just as disgusted and angry with the new ending as the executives.  With the movie a bust, Homer tries to pitch crazy new movie ideas to Mel, but Mel dismisses Homer away, just as an evil dog makes its shifty-eyed appearance.

Quick Review
This is one of the weaker season premieres thus far.  As with When You Dish Upon a Star from last season, this episode focuses its plot around a celebrity, this time with Mel Gibson, and the overall comedy of the episode suffers for it.  I say this even though Mel Gibson's appearance itself was by no means bad, and the shifty-eye dog bit was pretty good, but the episode's plot was not all that great.

Final Score: 7.4

No comments:

Post a Comment