Danny DeVito is obviously famous for his many acting roles, from Frank Reynolds in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, to Martin Weir in Get Shorty, to whoever that guy in the 1970s sex van movie was.
But DeVito is also an accomplished director, having helmed movies like the beloved children’s classic Matilda and the kind of beloved, not-quite-classic Death to Smoochy. Then there was his 1989 black comedy The War of the Roses, which starred Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner as a rich couple going through an intense divorce.
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The movie was a big hit, which explains why it’s now been remade with Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman.
But, in retrospect, one of the most notable aspects of the original had nothing to do with the actual movie, but rather, the animated short that preceded it.
When The War of the Roses hit theaters in ‘89, audiences were treated to a cartoon prior to the feature, starring some family called “the Simpsons.” The short, “Family Therapy” found the dysfunctional unit visiting a therapist. Things don’t go well. Even the usually well-mannered Lisa kicks the poor guy in the ankle.
“Family Therapy” originally aired, along with the rest of the early Simpsons shorts, on The Tracey Ullman Show. And since The War of the Roses was produced by James L. Brooks, who also produced Ullman’s show (and later The Simpsons), it made sense to package the cartoon with the movie. Plus, DeVito’s film featured Dan Castellaneta, Homer Simpson himself, in a small role.
In The Orlando Sentinel’s review of the The War of the Roses, the paper referenced the short starring “the quarrelsome cartoon family created by artist Matt Groening,” but also noted that the Simpsons characters “aren’t nearly as brilliant as Groening’s wonderful comic strip, Life in Hell, which is syndicated in 185 newspapers.” They did admit that “Family Therapy” is “one of the better of the episodes,” and pointed out that “it does echo the family-as-battleground premise of The War of the Roses.”
Most interestingly, the movie was released on December 8, 1989, just nine days before The Simpsons’ premiere episode, “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire,” aired. And The War of the Roses was a “box office smash” meaning that a whole lot of people were probably introduced to the Simpsons characters in movie theaters. And with the TV series debuting so soon after the film, it stands to reason that The War of the Roses helped set the stage for the show’s success.
Sadly, it doesn’t seem as though the remake includes any animated shorts starring potential pop-culture icons.
