As Good As Turning On Your TV?

Rating: 6/10 (1 January 2010)

Early in the long-awaited, much-debated "The Simpsons Movie", legendary TV doofus Dad Homer Simpson makes a good point.
"I can't believe we're paying to see something we get on TV for free!" he tells a theater full of patrons watching the new Itchy & Scratchy movie.
Does "The Simpsons Movie" justify its long wait, not to mention the money you might have spent for cinema tickets or a DVD rental? Since I borrowed my copy from the library, I'm still wrestling with this one. I was amused and entertained, enjoying the depth of visual information that came with the feature-film budget. But I can tick off a dozen episodes from the TV show's first eight seasons that were better, tighter stories and funnier besides.
It's a bad day in Springfield when Homer decides to ignore environmental warnings and dumps a silo full of pig leavings into the local lake. The EPA seals off Springfield with a giant dome, and the Simpsons become fugitives from both the government and their frenzied fellow Springfieldians. Can Homer save the town, or will he lose his family?
Director David Silverman and the movie producers try to create a stand-alone feature film while at the same time rallying the Simpsons' deep and loyal fan base. I think they lean too hard in the latter direction. A lot of the film's gags require audience familiarity with secondary and tertiary characters from the TV show, a.k.a. the Comic Book Guy thanking Marge Simpson for letting him wear her pregnancy pants. ("I've never known comfort like this!") Who would have guessed Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel would have more lines than Mr. Burns?
The joke of Homer's stupidity is beaten to the ground like Joe Pesci in "Casino". But I laughed because it's still funny all these years on. Like Homer's trick of catching fish by dropping a bug zapper into a pond. Or his reason for choosing to move to Alaska: "Where you can't be too fat or too drunk!"
Most of the jokes are single-shot affairs, like what you get these days watching "The Simpsons" or its pale imitator, "Family Guy". The opportunity to do something appropriately novel with the old formula is largely ignored. The pollution story is neither new nor interesting. The biggest sustained laugh involves Bart skateboarding naked for its numerous hidden-weiner gags. "Listen kid, no one likes wearing clothes in public," an arresting officer tells him. "But it's the law."
The writers behind "The Simpsons" are clever enough to throw a line like that at you every few minutes, and the characters are enjoyable company that don't wear out their welcome. But I never felt I was watching anything here other than bits and pieces that would have wound up on the TV series in some form at some later time.
Given that it's "The Simpsons", and a national treasure, it's still fun to sit through "The Simpsons Movie". But like "Mt. Rushmore: The Board Game", I was left wondering about its necessity.