Hello, I'm Rainier Wolfcastle. You probably know me as the star of McBain IV: Fatal Discharge--but I'm here today to tell you about The Simpsons Movie.

It's a summer blockbuster thriller event movie, so I should have played the hero: battling the brutal forces of the Environmental Protection Agency, escaping from a futuristic hell to the unspoiled boredom of Alaska, making love to a woman who looks like a blue-tipped stalk of yellow asparagus. But I did not even get to read for The Simpsons Movie. My close friend and archrival, Arnold Schwarzenegger, got to read, but he was given the negligible role of President of the United States. Matt Damon was busy. Therefore, the hero of this motion picture was played by Homer Simpson, who is inadequate. He specializes in inadequacy.

You may think that a movie starring this pouchy, finger-twiddling Homer can only be a summer blockbuster thriller event parody. You are wrong. The Simpsons Movie copies all of my films faithfully, and for the same reason that I have copied them myself, because I don't know what else to do when I make a big picture. But still you may say to me, "McBain!" (I am used to it.) "Is The Simpsons Movie funny?" And I will tell you, "Yes--but not as funny as it is wide." In the really funny Simpsons, on television, Homer and his family test themselves against their traditional enemies: their employer, their neighbors and one another. These forces they may fight with cruel ferocity. The helicopters, the time bomb, the motorcycle and the data-mining center of the National Security Agency they should have left to me.

I know the television Simpsons has filled with laughter the mouths of many hate-America-first surrender weasels like Stuart Klawans, who will forgive in their weak-kneed way the flabby Homerishness that infects like pond scum this false epic of Jello-colored CinemaScope. But can I, Rainier Wolfcastle, forgive a once-great man, Montgomery Burns? I always believed he allowed The Simpsons to appear on his Fox television network only because it brought him a pretty penny, which he could use to save America. But now Mr. Burns, with his Twentieth Century Fox, has let this family ruin something that should have been a true McBain movie. Will we ever again see a true McBain movie?

Yes. Schwarzenegger came back. Willis came back. And Wolfcastle will come back, to dominate again even our surrender-weasel era. Meanwhile, watch for me in my new romantic eighteenth-century costume drama, Becoming McBain, in theaters everywhere.

• « Previous
• 1
• 2

• Get The Nation at home (and online!) for 75 cents a week!
• If you like this article, consider making a donation to The Nation.