If this is the state of cultural awareness and the barometer of our Christian worldview, then we are changing the road signs to Sodom and Gomorrah.

The Simpsons have been on TV for eighteen years—the second-longest running primetime program behind 60 Minutes. So unless you’ve been in the Peace Corps for a good chunk of that time or simply don’t watch any television, you probably already have an opinion about America’s favorite animated family.

The show’s creators know this, and, in a stroke of genius, use it to their advantage in the uproariously funny self-aware opening to The Simpsons Movie. Let’s face it. Most television shows don’t translate well to the big screen, and that’s especially true for 15- or 30-minute cartoons that don’t have the depth or nuance to expand into feature length. But The Simpsons, with its broad range of slapstick and satire, effortlessly stretches to four times the usual length of a 22-minute episode, yielding one of the most successful television-to-cinema transplants I’ve ever seen: “Best … feature-length … episode … ever.”