Lisa makes a film that gets into the Sundance Film Festival. While it's a success, it also paints the family in a rather insensitive, unflattering light.
Tropes:
- Abusive Parents: After watching Lisa's film, a man asked Homer to strangle his child.
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Lisa's first stab at filmmaking, according to Skinner, "has everything: emotion, conflict, Milhouse."
- As Himself: Jim Jarmusch and John C. Reilly.
- Bait-and-Switch Comment: While looking through the pile of film submissions for a non-mainstream film, the Sundance Committee finds a film about Paul Giamatti ('ooh')...as the world's greatest super spy ('groan')...who only exists in the mind of an overweight agoraphobic jazz musician...('Oh!')...played by Martin Lawrence in a fat suit. ('Collective Groan'). Naturally, they throw it into the fire.
- Bill... Bill... Junk... Bill...: Homer's reaction to the various charities asking for money (calling Doctors Without Borders "Doctors Without Money" and saying that Greenpeace will not get a piece of his green.) He even almost cuts Lisa's Sundance invitation in half thinking this way.
- Blatant Lies: After the negative reaction to the film by the family, Lisa claims that she did had no say in how the film was edited. This is then immediately followed by a title card read by Lisa herself that it was proudly edited by her.
- Comical Overreacting: In one scene of Lisa's film, Mr. Largo has the school orchestra play a dramatic piece he calls 'Homer's Lament'. The scene in question is Homer crying over being unable to pull a pickle out of a jar.
- Daydream Surprise: When Chalmers and Skinner sleigh down a hill, they crash through a church and come out with several brides between them. After Chalmers asks if this is real, one of the women replies that it's not and that both of them have in fact crashed their sled and are lying unconscious in a snow embankment, which they are currently located.
- Dodgy Toupee: Homer attempts to wear one at the start of Lisa's film, only for her to remove it from his head, citing how she wanted realism.
- Freeze-Frame Ending: The episode parodied the ending of The 400 Blows (compare
). - Hidden Depths: This episode is yet another example to how much deeper Nelson Muntz is as a character and how much he has grown from the cruel bully without a cause from the first season to a more introspective, sensitive boy who's more than meets the eye.
- Imagine Spot: Homer's idea of what a film festival is is...well...interesting. See it here.
- Insistent Terminology: Homer says begging from people the "beggar" knows is "mooching".
- Instantly Proven Wrong: Lisa tries to assure her family that nobody outside the festival is ever going to hear about the film, which is followed by Comic Book Guy writing an online review.
- I Resemble That Remark!:Homer: Lisa, you made us look like monsters!
Homer, Bart and Marge: (with shadows over them and all of them—including Maggie—looking furious and evil) MONSTERS! MONSTERS! MONSTERS!!!! - Irrational Hatred: One member of the audience shouts "Death to Maggie!" in response to Lisa's film, despite Maggie having said or done nothing notable throughout.
- Jerkass: Many of the Sundance Festival filmgoers, who have no problem goading or mocking the Simpsons or Nelson and his mother. Special mention goes to the audience member who wanted Maggie (a baby) to be put to death.
- Limited Wardrobe: The family's clothing for the festival doesn't differ from their usual churchgoing clothes.
- Misery Poker: This actually works in Lisa's favor. She's worried her family will stay mad at her when her film depicting them at their worst becomes the hit of the festival, but it's almost instantly forgotten when everyone sees a similar film made by Nelson, whose home life makes hers look positively rosy in comparison.
- Never Trust a Title: Marge is excited to go see the films Regularsville and Candyland, with the latter being erroneously confused by her as being a film based off of the board game of the same name. What she discovers instead is a half-naked man putting on lipstick and a couple shooting up heroin, respectively. She then concludes all the titles mean the opposite of what's in them and decides that she'll love a movie called "Chernobyl Graveyard". We never get to see what's in it (which is just as well), but she apparently didn't like it.
- Oh, Crap!: Martin reacts this way when, after being used by the bullies for a ketchup patting sound effect, the next scene has Marge beating a steak with a mallet.
- Quirky Household: Humorously discussed when Lisa tries to argue that all her scathing documentary did was portray her "unique and quirky home life."Homer: Quirky?! "Quirky" is a grandma who gives people the finger. You made us look like monsters!
- Shout-Out: Lisa's camera has "My Little Sony" written on it.
- The Stinger: The first part of the credits has an extra scene with Skinner and Chalmers.
- Take That!:
- "No more Simpsons movies! One is plenty!"
- The marquee outside of the judges' home says "Do Not Feed Ben Affleck".
- At the festival, we see Woody Allen trying to explain to an angry Soon-Yi that he was only thinking about adopting Scarlett Johansson.
- The judges reject a potential spy movie with Paul Giamatti and Martin Lawrence...with Lawrence in a fat suit.
- Too Dumb to Live: The other Sundance Festival judges who were deliberately told not to gasp too much due to their high altitude did anyway in reaction to Lisa's film. They are then seen being loaded into ambulances with a few of them dying as a result.
- Vanity Plate: Skinner and Chalmers create one of their own, "Chalmskinn Productions", which has the set up of the Paramount logo and the music of the DreamWorks SKG logo.
