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THE SIMPSONS MOVIE Crafting a motion picture from a current television series that's been around for nearly two decades is a dicey proposition (as has been pointed out, why pay for something you can get for free at home?), but The Simpsons Movie fills the larger dimensions of the theater screen quite nicely. Running the length of four combined episodes, this often hilarious flick takes Homer's weekly display of idiocy to a new level, as his bumbling disrespect for the environment leads to Springfield being blocked off from the rest of the world by a giant dome, with the town's destruction the ultimate goal of the overzealous head of the Environmental Protection Agency (voiced by Albert Brooks, billed in the credits as "A. Brooks"). Knowing that Homer is the culprit, the town's residents soon come a-calling with torches in hand and nooses hanging from nearby trees. But if there's one area in which Hollywood remains blissfully, even blessedly, optimistic, it's in the strength of the family unit, and as long as Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie stick together, they can lick any and all odds. Yet in this outing, even that tried and true formula is put to the test, as Homer's selfishness and cluelessness strains even the patience of Marge, perhaps the most devoted wife of a pigheaded TV character since Edith Bunker used to stand up for Archie back in the 1970s. Marge's romantic crisis manages to be touching, as does do-gooder Lisa's love for the progressive new kid on the block. But The Simpsons Movie is mainly about jokes -- old jokes, new jokes, topical jokes, risqué jokes, sight gags, perhaps even a non sequitur or two. ***1/2
STARDUST This enchanting fairy tale offers the most fun to be had in a theater this summer. Based on the graphic novel by Neil Gaiman, it's a fantasy yarn in the tradition of The Princess Bride and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, only it bests its antecedents by remaining light on its feet and by constantly surprising us with both its visual and narrative vigor. In the tiny English village of Wall, young Tristan (Charlie Cox) pines for the stuck-up Victoria (Sienna Miller) to such a degree that he will prove his devotion by journeying to the magical land resting just outside the town's border and retrieve the remnants of a fallen star that the pair had seen drop from the sky. What Tristan doesn't realize is that once a star has fallen, it turns into a human -- in this case, a woman named Yvaine (Claire Danes). Add the desires of a wicked witch (Michelle Pfeiffer), the demands of a dying king (Peter O'Toole), and the dilemmas of a pirate (Robert De Niro) to the mix, and it sounds like there's too much plot for one movie to bear. But Jane Goldman and director Matthew Vaughn (Layer Cake), co-adapting Gaiman's novel, do an exemplary job of funneling all the disparate elements into one cohesive narrative. Pfeiffer clearly relishes portraying a villainess as much here as she does in the current Hairspray; as for De Niro, he's playing a pirate so fey that he makes Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow look as ferocious as Blackbeard by comparison. De Niro's grossly miscast, but that doesn't stop him from diving into the role. He's clearly having a lot of fun, as are we all. ***1/2
