“The Simpsons Ride” at Universal Studios Hollywood

This review comes a week later than I’d originally intended. Last Sunday, a fire broke out at Universal Studios Hollywood, and the park was closed for the entire day, the same day I’d been planning to go and ride the new Simpsons attraction. The devastation was confined only to the backlot, leveling the “Back to the Future” clock tower, the King Kong attraction from the Studio Tour and a video vault that contained “Knocked Up” and 39,999 other titles from Universal’s film library. Fortunately, duplicate copies of “Knocked Up” are kept in another vault off the property, so scenes with Katherine Heigl making love with her bra still on have not been lost forever. Whew!

Now one of the major regrets of my adult life — one that doesn’t involve women, anyway — is that I didn’t go on the “Back to the Future” ride when I went to Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios in 2006. Had I known the attraction was going to soon be shuttered, I’d have enjoyed it at least one last time. But I thought it’d never close, not in a million years. After all, it’s one of the attractions there that’s actually based on a Universal Pictures movie. I’m looking at you, “Shrek 4-D” and “T2:3-D!”

As it turns out, I’m wrong about a lot of things. And one of them was the fate of the BTTF ride. It was ultimately closed down, and in its place, “The Simpsons Ride” (a 20th Century Fox property for anyone keeping score) was built. I’m a fan of “The Simpsons.” I actually enjoyed the film last summer more than most people, so I wasn’t opposed to the idea of the ride’s existence. I’d just prefer it if they hadn’t put it exactly where one of my long-time favorite rides once stood.

Bitterness aside, “The Simpsons Ride” is great fun. It’s a motion simulator, like BTTF, but it’s also quite possible that it exceeds the quality of BTTF. To be fair, “Back to the Future: The Ride” was something like fifteen years old. It was a little dated, but not quite as primordial as “Star Tours” at Disneyland. Still, an older ride isn’t without its charms. Every time I visit Universal — about once a year or so — I absolutely have to go on “Jurassic Park: The Ride,” an attraction that’s getting a little long in the tooth itself. But I’d boycott Universal for 100 lifetimes if they were ever to shut it down.

At any rate, the two times I went on “The Simpsons Ride” today were absolutely amazing and wowed me enough to no longer begrudge it for taking “Back to the Future: The Ride” away from me. The queue — or the “pre-show area” — is designed to look like Krustyland. You actually enter the line by walking through Krusty the Clown’s mouth on a “red carpet” that’s his unfurled, not to mention kinda squishy, tongue. The queue line is impressive in its detail, stopping short of painting all the tourists yellow to make them authentic-looking Simpsons characters. You really feel like you’re in Springfield. As you’re waiting interminably in line, ceiling-mounted TVs play selected clips from “The Simpsons,” mostly the episode where they go to a theme park and Itchy and Scratchy robots go beserk, a la “Westworld.” There’s also a great scene created for the attraction that explains why the BTTF ride was closed down and replaced by “The Simpsons Ride,” keeping with the show’s brilliant self-awareness.

The ride itself puts you in a car directly behind the Simpsons on a ginormous roller coaster. Sideshow Bob has taken control of the park and has begun wrecking shop. You and the Simpsons are hurled from one Krustyland attraction to the next. It’s impossible to keep up with the amount of jokes that are tossed off or take in all of the fantastic visuals throughout the ride. The video projection is all-CGI, not 2-D hand-drawn animation like the television show. Where it may sound jarring, like the “Homer³” segment in an old “Treehouse of Horror” episode, I think computer graphics make the world more immersive.

Universal may have broken my heart by closing down “Back to the Future: The Ride,” but they could’ve done a lot worse than having “The Simpsons Ride” take its place. That said, they should do something about lowering the price of their Duff energy drink. I’m not a huge fan of energy drinks. I am, however, a huge fan of clever theming and occasionally buy crap in gift shops I should’ve absolutely put back on the shelf. It was north of $5. For 12 ounces of Full Throttle. In a can that said “Duff.”

D’oh.

-Brad Lohan

See “Knocked Up,” now available from Universal Home Video.