Good but nothing you haven't seen before

Rating: 6/10 (27 July 2007)

It's been a long time coming but finally after 18 years of the Simpsons we get the long overdue movie. Is this a case of the horse having already bolted from the stable? Well, a little bit but to be fair after 18 years of material coming up with new stuff is going to be difficult and while the Simpsons movie does admirably to entertain for it's short running time it feels like little more than an extended episode with one or two bits of obviously superior animation.
The plot is nothing more than what we'd expect from an episode of the show but being movie length means that Groening and co can stuff more than the usual amount of Simpsons tomfoolery into the bits between the plot. Just about every single regular character ever from the Simpsons mythos gets at least a cameo look in although shame on Groening and co for giving Mr Burns such a stupidly small part in the movie. There are a good few belly laughs throughout the movie including a few that take more than the usual "Shown in TV land before the watershed" risks.
It's unfortunate that after so many years of the Simpsons some of the gags are getting a bit predictable (not to mention recycled) but it's to the shows credit that even those bit's are still funny a lot of the time. I mean Homer's as much the clueless buffoon as he ever was which is always funny right. I was surprised that the movie didn't take more shots at pop culture but I guess thats a good way to date a movie quickly so maybe they deliberately chose not to go down that road.
If I was rating this movie alongside the series I'd say it was at least as good as one of the better than average episodes but a long way off the really good ones......