Is it worth the 18 year wait?

Rating: 7/10 (25 July 2007)

Does the film win back hearts? Is it the same as the modern show? Is spider-pig still the scourge of the total lack of taste in the culture we live in today? All three answers are yes.
The film starts with the logos, and annoying and unfunny modern Ralph Wiggum, overused all the time, singing the fanfare as well, and then into the 'movie'. Well, Itchy and Scratchy 2, and what a nice little cartoon that is, until Homer has to ruin it, poke fun at everyone for paying to see the film, and we begin with some opening sequence especially for the movie.
The animation has improved a lot, clearer, more details, and some nice use of 3-D models.
Still, it doesn't amount to much in the whole scheme of things, and the first scene of the real part of the film sets the tone to the events. Green Day (Why a crap band anyway) are doing a concert at Lake Springfield, and are pelted at when they try to talk about the environment, and soon enough the lake dissolves their ship, and we get a great and rarely laughed at by the crowd Titanic joke. Violins anyone? From then on we go through two plots, Lisa campaigning about the environment, a terrible character now, she was once funny when she showed she had a sense of humour too, but now is just dull and not care able, and she meets a boy, with an atrocious Irish accent and a string of unfunny almost not jokes.
The other side of the family is Bart and Homer, hanging out, doing chores, starting a dare contest, involving Bart's dick, and how grossly unfunny and completely unnecessary that scene is, but everyone else just laughs like they would at a terrible modern episode.
Bart's story here is about wanting to have a father like Flanders, rather than Homer. Marge ends up having a story later on in the film when she hates Homer, and Maggie, she gets to break a bottle, jump around and throw a rock at the baddie, just perfect, best character in the family.
After the nudity, he collects Bart and they go into Krusty Burger, where, as always on open days at a business, a commercial is being shot, and a pig is about to be killed, but is too cute and Homer-like for him to allow it, so they get a new pet, one that takes to him like he does to it. Unfortunately, all his leavings need to be disposed of properly, a ban on dumping In the Lake is enforced, but Homer as he is, decides that dumping would take too long, and the poor guy wants donuts, so bang, there it is, contaminated lake, donuts needed, environmental disaster, that makes Environmental Agency leader Cargill (played with classic panache and some great improves by Albert Brooks) give the new president, a completely ridiculous Schwarzenegger where a more subtle Wolfcastle would have fit perfectly, the option to dome Springfield and remove it from the country.
It's a bunch of bad plots with some particularly funny, and some awfully horrendous, jokes, but the killer here is that as it's a big screen outing, the writers, the series' finest including one John Swartzwelder, writer of over 50 episodes, most of them are the shows finest and most original, and funny, decided to make it one with a message, and is hit over the head until we are all feeling the pain, of global warming, yeah, we don't care, we want to see funny moments and a clever, smaller than city wide death script, so hopefully in the sequel a more family based series of events one can hope.
The writing is average, the animation is great, the jokes range from terrible (Spider-Pig) to genius (on signs Homer placed as a distraction- "We shouldn't stop at any more 'sop', 'yeld' or one 'vew' signs") and the voices are almost great, Julie Kavner in some of the latter scenes tries to make sad Marge too much like her own voice, and it sounds like Marge gets bunged up then back to normal.
Too many flashbacks, not enough explanation of random events and not looking at the town enough, Burns and Smithers only have 2 talking scenes, Apu has one, Moe has a bit, but it looks like his events could have made the film interesting for a further 20 minutes alone, as, like most TV movie spin-offs, it only hits the 1 hour 20 odd minute mark.
The music is interesting, using Hans Zimmer over Alf Clausan was a dare that paid off it seems, but using Dan Castellaneta as the animals rather than Frank Welker, voice over god himself, seems to detract from the quality.
The best bit of the not for TV moments, there are 2 I can tell, was Otto, he knows how to rock the bong and it's a nice little moment from a great and sorely underused character, and when that seems very good Simpsons, they fall into bad Simpsons too, Cletus, one note stereotype, trying to be used as a character, he has an almost Sideshow Bob and the rakes moment but they only do it twice then put in a line, rather than repeating it over and over and over and over and over and over again, which would have been hilarious.
Overall, it is an opportunity sorely wasted on cheap bad jokes, too much environmentalism and the same Homer plot we've had almost 300 times now, hopefully Futurama will come back in fashion to prove it deserves the title it stole from The Simpsons 8 years ago.
8/10