Disappointing

Rating: 5/10 (26 July 2007)

After six years in production, The Simpsons Movie is here at last. So how does the venerable TV show translate to the big screen? Well, the animation has been given a big face-lift, leaving it crisper and livelier than ever before. (Although the trailers boast that The Simpsons is proudly 2D, there's a lot of slick 3D rendering with cell shading overlaid.) The length -- almost four times that of a regular episode -- permits an unprecedented cameo-fest, with Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright, Yeardley Smith, Harry Shearer, Hank Azaria, et al voicing a 98-character-strong menagerie. But in most other respects it's the TV show writ large. And although this will please some fans, the truth is that the writers have not really risen to the occasion offered by the medium.
The plot is essentially a variation on a well-worn Simpsons motif: Homer's impulsiveness lands the family in a wacky situation. In this instance, Homer tips poop into dangerously-polluted Springfield Lake, resulting in the power-mad Environmental Protection Agency supremo (Albert Brooks) putting a gigantic dome over Springfield, ostensibly to quarantine it. Along the way we encounter some other familiar developments: Homer's exasperating disregard for Marge causes marital strife, before he has an epiphany and changes his ways. Homer takes an inappropriate pet. Homer's bad parenting causes Bart to seek another father figure. Lisa meets a boy with improbably similar interests. And so on. Long-time Simpsons fans have seen it all before, sometimes several times, and it's a bit disappointing to find such tired clichés wheeled out again, especially since the movie and its 87-minute runtime were a chance to do something new with the series.
But bearing its limited inventiveness in mind, it's perfectly possible to enjoy The Simpsons Movie. The jokes vary in quality but are so many -- nearly every line is a gag -- that enough stick to keep the audience amused. (Unsurprisingly, the biggest laughs come near the beginning, before the weak plot gathers pace.) On the other hand, there are no instances of genuinely brilliant wit, the kind we've seen in the series on a number of occasions. An average 6-minute episode of Yu-Gi-Oh: The Abridged Series is probably more quotable.
You are unlikely, for example, to leave the cinema regaling your friends with "The federal government finally found something!" Suffice it to say that as a piece of summer fluff, The Simpsons Movie delivers adequately. But as the long-awaited cinematic take on a veritable cultural icon, it is a let down: neither taking advantage of its swollen budget and lengthy runtime to try something new and interesting, nor even managing to stage the familiar with the incisive wit and engaging plotting of many classic Simpsons episodes.