OK, not great

Rating: 5/10 (5 August 2007)

I am a die hard Simpsons fan. I have seen every episode, own all the seasons on DVD and the companion books. After all the hype I heard about this movie, all the rewrites to make it just right, I thought it would be great. It was good, but lacking in a lot of ways.
The film focused on the inner family only. The secondary characters, which made the show so funny over the years, were lucky if they got one throw away line. There were a few new characters introduced, but they were so poorly developed that they just took up time and offered little humor.
The movie is mostly about Homer, going through a journey and becoming a better person. This is my biggest complaint. In the movie Homer is a horrible terrible person. This is not how he is supposed to be! People who treasure the old episodes will surely agree that the basis of Homer's character is stupidity, not cruelty. He is supposed to mean well and try to do what is right, but his stupidity gets in the way and leads to many wacky adventures. In the movie he is more mean than stupid. There should be no need for him to realize he is selfish and ruining everyone's lives, because he should never have been written as being so selfish that he is ruining everyone's lives in the first place. Homer is written completely out of character. I hope you followed that. This blunder ruined any sentimentality in the movie.
There were too many "touching" moments. They just dragged down the film and I personally don't think anyone changed that much during the movie.
Some people complain that it is an extended episode, but I disagree. It would have been better if it was an extended episode, because the show is really funny. The writers themselves have said that the funniest jokes don't advance the plot, so they should have made a simple plot and filled it out with jokes, jokes, jokes. Instead we get an overly complicated plot with a supposedly sentimental heart that is lacking funny.
There were obviously too many rewrites done. I saw the animatics and trailers and thought they were very funny, but I was unhappy to find all the funny stuff had been written out. This is what I think happened: They were working on this for 7 years and I'm sure the first draft was hilarious, but after they heard the same jokes 40 times the mistakenly thought that they were not funny anymore and replaced them with less funny jokes. This kept happening until they were forced to stop rewriting and they were left with something that had the 60th generation jokes in it. I bet the DVD is going to be loaded with deleted scenes that are better than the movie.
In conclusion, for a movie that assembled the best writing team every to grace television, I would have expected much better. I recommend this movie because I like the the show the Simpsons and the movie is not bad, it is OK.