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Rating: 8/10 (4 July 2008)

Gave this movie a miss when it came out onto the big screen. In recent years this cartoon had become the kind of cartoon I always feared it would be...safe, catch-phrase laden and unfunny. In fact, I'm pretty sure that I didn't watch this cartoon for the first few years of it getting its own show-an early promo by Channel Ten in Australia made it seem like the show it would become in recent years. Was a fan of the original show though, when it was just a feature of The Tracy Ulmann Show.
In any case, it's obvious from this movie that the writers of The Simpsons still had enough fuel in the tank to make a feature length movie which was actually top notch. That gives them one over South Park, which to my mind at least, failed in its transition to the big screen (I've reviewed that South Park movie at this site today).
This movie is very funny with plenty of laugh out loud moments. In fact, I had a sort of Homer Simpson (main character of the show...a big, dumb guy) moment watching this...I watched the DVD extras and found myself being reminded of hilarious scenes which I had just seen not minutes ago and had forgotten about! One of my favourite scenes is where Homer is driving a sledge pulled by dogs....lots of comedy gold in this scene!
Be sure to watch the end credits of this movie-there are more jokes and what must now be baby Maggie's THIRD lot of "first word ever uttered"- that's three lots of different first words over the course of this series!
One issue-this movie is in an extra wide screen format. You really need a big TV- preferably widescreen-in order to get a good sized view...especially if you like to read the end credits...which some of us do. Not quite as bad as what Channel Ten does to the end credits of programmes, where they shrink the screen to highlight those all important ads. Nearly as bad, though.
A "must see" cartoon comedy in any case.