Average

Rating: 6/10 (25 August 2008)

The Simpsons had been going downhill since the 9th Series, and the show lost a lot of credibility of making episodes like The Principal and the Pauper and All Singing, All Dancing, but generally still a good series. The new episodes are barely watchable now and to me the Simpsons is like an old sick pet, you would rather see it put to sleep then watch it suffer anymore pain. I did not have high hopes for the Simpsons Movies because of the decline of the show, and few of my friends did not recommend seeing it. I did not see it at the cinema and have recently seen it on Sky Movies.
The plot of the film is that Springfield is on the edge of ecologically disaster and Lisa campaigns to protect Springfield River. At church Grampa Simpson has a vision and warns that Springfield is heading for danger. Mayor Quimby orders that the river needs to be cleaned up. At the same time Homer adopts a pet pig, Spiderpig/Harry Popper (you can guess what they were making fun of). Homer ends up filling a silo full of pig and his own waste. When taking the silo to be disposed of Lenny calls Homer to tell him that Lard-boy doughnuts were going out of business and giving after free doughnuts. Knowing the fellow that Homer is, he decides to take a short cut and dump the waste into river. Doing this makes Springfield the most polluted city in America and the evil head of the Eniviromental Protection Agency (E.P.A), uses President Schwarzenegger, to seal Springfield behind a giant dome. When the citizens of Springfield find out that Homer was the reason why Springfield became too polluted and Homer and family have to escape the town, before saving it. There are two subplots, first Bart became more hostile to Homer, and ends up befriending Flanders, wishing that he was his father. The second is Lisa ends up falling for an Irish boy, Colin, who shares a lot of interest with her, including music and their passion for the environment.
There were jokes that were not very good and could easily be missed or ignored. But there were still so decent jokes, ranging from Maggie nearly fighting with Mr. Tweeny, to seeing Bart's penis (nothing like a minor bit of paedophilia (I am joking!)), to some of the verbal gags. But it still isn't great. One scene shows Homer pointing his middle fingers (flipping the bird as the Americans say), which I think never fits with the type of humour the Simpsons started out doing. The main problem with the film was that it tried to go for the widest possible audience, attempting to be too family friendly and trying to lure non-Simpsons fans, not being smart enough and relying on slapstick humour, i.e. Homer hurting himself. There was also be to much reliance on cameos, such as Green Day and Tom Hanks. However, the animation is very good, combining the traditional Simpsons style with a more cinematic style. I also like the politics satiring American politics, the media and the environment. It takes the mick out of America's attitude towards the environment, such as the negative reaction at the Green Day concert and $1000 being given to Aslakan people to destroy the natural beauty of the state (espeically where there is so little oil that it would cost more to drill out the oil then it would to make money out of it).
Overall, not the best, but not the worst.