While we’ve all been more-or-less getting used to the idea that Disney now owns the entirety of the vast Fox catalogue – including decidedly non-Disney-friendly fare like Aliens, Planet of the Apes, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show – there is still a huge and significant wall of cognitive dissonance surrounding The Simpsons. Matt Groening’s 31-year-old animated creation was, after all, launched as something subversive and even naughty; upon its launch in 1989, it was still regarded as mildly scandalous to hear an animated character say the word “damn” on primetime network TV. Those of us who were kids during the early years of The Simpsons understood that, in watching it, we were getting away with something. The impish cultural subversion presented by The Simpsons would eventually come to define the sarcastic operational ethos of the 1990s.
But that was the ’90s. This is 2020, and arguments about when or whether The Simpsons jumped the shark are plentiful. It doesn’t take much prodding to goad a casual Simpsons fan into admitting the exact season they felt was the last time The Simpsons was “good.” Although the “jump the shark” moments are varied and widespread in these anecdotal arguments, the very general cultural consensus seems to be that The Simpsons has been slowly devolving into… well, into something different. Something less edgy. Something ineffably complacent.
We have now reached the point wherein a theatrical Simpsons short – only the second ever made – is now being used as the opening salvo to a Disney-owned animated feature film, and the cognitive dissonance now stands openly and brazenly before us like the terrifying titular edifice in Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Disney owns The Simpsons. All in all, it’s just another brick in the wall. The Simpsons, it seems, has now completed its full evolutionary life cycle. It is now – no matter how crass or edgy they once were – a Disney product.
All these thoughts were swirling through my head when seeing the title card of “Playdate with Destiny,” which bore a proud “Disney Welcomes The Simpsons.” Has the Mouse House become daring, or have the Simpsons been swallowed?
The short itself is a brisk and amusing trifle that follows a romantic adventure of the never-aging infant Simpson, Maggie, as she becomes smitten with a fellow silent child at the local park. Maggie’s paramour, Hudson, sports a small shock of blonde hair on his forehead, and the two bond over mutually elaborate fantasies of Parisian sunsets, and their shared passion for eating sand. At night, Hudson is all Maggie can think about, and she eagerly awaits a return to the park. When Homer takes Maggie to a different park the following day (a much more dangerous park that advertises how much Ritalin one is expected to take upon entry, and features a taco truck named Taco Malo), she must use her one and a half-year-old mental resources to orchestrate a reunion.
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When compared to “The Longest Daycare” – the 2012 Maggie Simpson short that was shown before Ice Age: Continental Drift, and which was nominated for an Oscar – “Playdate with Destiny” feels more wispy. “The Longest Daycare” was about Maggie using her wits to outsmart the oppressive and unfair ideas of a preschool that had adopted Ayn Rand’s blunt, prejudiced philosophies to raise kids. It was, however simple, a comment on the way kids are raised in a modern milieu, and how Maggie’s sweetness could be wielded as a counterpoint. “Playdate with Destiny,” on the other hand, is free of such commentary. It is, in the tradition of Tex Avery, a gag delivery system wherein veteran Simpsons director David Silverman can explore a few fun/funny baby versions of traditional romantic imagery.
Taken outside of the context of the film that it precedes, “Playdate with Destiny” is perfectly amusing and provides a few genuine laughs, although perhaps no guffaws. It’s a lightweight, well-animated, slicker-than-usual Simpsons aside that bares the humor we’ve all come to know from the series. When watched independently, one will find little to criticize. Well, aside from its comparative simplicity.
