Don't add to the box office for this lazy and insipid effort.

Rating: 2/10 (5 August 2007)

This is the first review I've been inspired to write on IMDb for probably five years now. I just can't read one more user review inexplicably giving this film 8 or 10 stars.
I'm not going to go for the easy hit and say that this movie is pretty much in conjunction with the fading quality of the last decade or so; in fact I don't even believe that is necessarily the case with the TV show. There have been some great episodes, even in the last few seasons, just as there have been many mediocre ones and downright stupid episodes (jockeys in a trash bag, anyone?).
I've never been a "worst episode ever" kind of crank, or a "season 3 and season 4 were the best" snob, or even cared that much about dumb Homer vs. smart Homer. The Simpsons' ability to layer irony, storyline, and conceptual rigor with a razor-sharp attention to current events means that every new episode is an opportunity for brilliance and relevance. So I come to every new offering with a tingle of hope.
I thought I had done a good job of reading qualified reviewers from resources I trusted. I listened to a few interviews of Matt Groening and got the impression that the producers and writers were all really proud and excited about this movie. Was everyone just lying, or ingratiating themselves with pop culture royalty? This movie is pig crap.
The story is bizarre and surreal, but not in a good "Treehouse of Horror" way. TV's greatest cast of supporting characters is wasted with one-liners and scan & pan crowd shots. New characters are introduced for no good reason. Certain jokes are pounded repeatedly, each time getting less funny. (Why does Matt Groening hate the government so much? Is he in tax trouble?) Plot developments are either (mostly) utterly predictable or (twice) utterly inexplicable. Any relevance to current events is stale and wit is hard to come by. Nothing about Iraq, terror, or politics; all subjects the TV show visits frequently with varying degrees of success. Here they didn't even try, unless you count litter in our lakes as a divisive political matter. "Commander cuckoo-bananas", the president himself, has here turned into a safe, alternate-universe version of reality.
The Simpsons has always been strongest when it tacks closest to reality by slightly twisting it and thereby revealing its strangeness. This movie does the opposite by creating strangeness and discarding reality altogether.
I'm awarding one star more than the minimum just for all the animators' hard work, utterly wasted by these writers. (I can see the Koreans muttering to themselves "what is the deal with the pig?" and "EPA Ospreys? huh?").
Two stars subtracted for plot. Just one simplistic story, no trademark interweaving of stories, not even a series of stories growing out of each other. Recyled, ham-handed, too outlandish, not outlandish enough.
Two more stars gone for characters; where are they? Sure, they are all there, milling about in the background, but the true pillar of strength of the Simpsons has been that its not just been about the Simpsons family! I don't want to see Maggie or Homer for the whole movie! Two more stars subtracted for setting. Alaska? domes? What? And the last two stars for hypocrisy, for the Simpsons creative team producing what they at their best once despised; easy, obvious, lowest common denominator humor. Most of the (perhaps three or four) funny moments blown in the previews. Not the slightest risk taken. Even the "environmental theme" is played about as safe as can be in the Inhofe era.
Not funny, not Simpsons quality (of any season's standard), not worth it.