5 To Watch: The Simpsons at the movies

When Apple TV announced its plans for a miniseries version of John D. McDonald’s The Executioners and its pair of film adaptations, curiosities were piqued. Could the suspense of the story’s three previous tellings be sustained across 10 episodes? How would Javier Bardem’s rendition of Max Cady hold up in comparison to those of Robert Mitchum and Robert De Niro? And could the entire enterprise withstand that most searing of criticisms, three words that have echoed through the heads of TV creators since they were first uttered 24 years ago: “Simpsons did it”?

It’s a significant amount of cheek to suggest that the definitive TV version of Cape Fear was delivered by an animated sitcom way back in 1993. But now that we’ve had a look at all but one episode of the 2026 Cape Fear, maybe there’s some truth to that declaration? What’s undeniable is that when The Simpsons was at the top of its game, it offered a weekly crash course in film history alongside some of the funniest, brainiest comedy ever televised. No list of the show’s best gags is complete without Stop The Planet Of The Apes I Want To Get Off, or Hans Moleman channeling Alfred Hitchcock while getting all Goldilocks about seed bells—the latter from an episode that pays extensive homage to both Westworld and the then-recently released Jurassic Park. And that’s without mentioning how many top-tier “Treehouse Of Horror” segments take root in big-screen chills and thrills. As a surprisingly copyright-law-aware Groundskeeper Willie would have us remember, there is no “The Shinning” without The Shining.

Then there are the episodes that manage to stretch this MAD Magazine-informed, raised-by-afternoon-movies-on-local-TV cinephilia to a full half-hour. This is another realm where “Cape Feare” arguably reigns supreme, but there are plenty of worthy contenders for its crown. If watching Cape Fear has left you feeling like Sideshow Bob after he’s been pummeled by speed bumps, scalded with hot coffee, dragged across a cactus patch, and hit in the face by one inconveniently placed rake after another, why not cue up the episode that gave the world that masterclass in endurance humor? And if not that one, try these four other Simpsons gems that made space for all-timer visual gags (“Milpool”), musical numbers (“Buy me a beer / two bucks a glass / Come on, help me / I’m freezing my ass”), and character development (even a millionaire as wretched as Mr. Burns has his “Rosebud”) amid plot points and images audiences first encountered at the movies.

“Cape Feare” (season 5, episode 2)

“A lot of people say it’s just wrong to write beat-for-beat parody in a comedy,” writer Jon Vitti says early in this episode’s DVD commentary. Clearly a lot of people could stand to rewatch “Cape Feare,” which remains the gold standard for Simpsons movie spoofs. Sure, the unacquainted viewer might not understand the significance of the Bernard Herrmann compositions that score Sideshow Bob’s reintroduction here (and became the instrumental prelude to Kelsey Grammer’s subsequent appearances as Bart’s nemesis) or his loud, smoky method of ruining the Simpsons’ viewing of Ernest Goes Somewhere Cheap. 

But you needn’t have met any onscreen version of Max Cady to grasp that a character as vengeful as Bob just makes sense within a structure built by one of film’s quintessential revenge stories. That leads to targeted Cape Fear riffs that became enduring, universally applicable Simpsons punchlines (“the Bart the”; the whiny pleading of Hank Azaria’s “very, very persuasive” private eye) as well as a bravura turn from Grammer, whose portrayal of Bob gained new dimensions of menace and hubris thanks to the character’s mimicry of Cady’s tactics and Wile E. Coyote-esque persistence. [Erik Adams]

“Rosebud” (season 5, episode 4)

The Simpsons never needed a reason to goof on Orson Welles’ masterpiece, often reducing the greatest movie ever made into one-off Planet Hollywood gags (“the cane from Citizen Kane“) or a Treehouse Of Horror title (“Citizen Kang”). But when Springfield’s own Charles Foster Kane, Mr. Burns, is involved, the parodies imbue Monty with something resembling interiority. The most elaborate is season five’s “Rosebud,” which restages Kane’s over-the-fence-and-through-the-snowglobe opening sequence into a Burns mini-biography. 

Legendary Simpsons scribe John Swartzwelder transforms Kane‘s wintry MacGuffin, some sled named Rosebud, into the missing piece of the Burns’ puzzle: a stuffed bear named Bobo, “a symbol of [his] lost youth and innocence,” which Burns abandons in choosing a twisted, loveless billionaire over his parents. Though specific Kane parodies end there, the theme of lost childhood continues, and Bobo falls into the hands of Maggie Simpson, setting the stage for future murder attempts. As it did Welles’ publishing tycoon, Bobo deepens Burns’ character and makes him something approaching sympathetic. By the end, though, thanks to a baby’s kindness, he once again gets everything he ever wanted. Well, almost everything. The Misadventures Of Sheriff Lobo has yet to return for a third season. [Matt Schimkowitz]