Surprisingly good

Rating: 9/10 (18 March 2012)

I had my doubts when this movie came out. The Simpson's had been around for roughly 20 years, many of the newer episodes had lost their edge and it was wondered whether this movie would either build on or destroy the franchise forever.
As a massive Simpson's fan, it's obvious that this movie caters more for the movie going public, rather than those who've graciously tuned in every day for the last 20 years. But that's not entirely a bad thing, it makes good sense commercially and this project had been in the pipeline for a number of years.
On the downside, I felt that the story was quite haphazard in its approach and instead of keeping it simple and fast-paced like so many classic episodes, went for the over-indulged huge crazy scheme, that assumed would generate equally huge crazy laughs. However that was the films biggest failure. Fans felt a little let down, and others felt, what the hell is going on here? What made this movie for me was the subtle in-jokes and one liners that Simpson addicts have come to love. The little things that the average person would easily miss, but the fan would point out and laugh at. Even though it's nothing more than a cartoon, the writing can be complex and very witty, and while this can work easily for a 30 minute episode, it's hard to translate that into a full length movie.
There were some classic scenes though, for example Homer dumping the pig silo into the lake and after realising what he's done races back to the car gets in the back seat screaming "Drive, drive, drive!" But he's the one who drove there and the only person in the car.
Only a fan would get the reference of Homer drinking at the Alaskan bar called "Eski-Moes" and only a fan would see the humour of the bomb disposal robot that would rather commit suicide than complete its mission.
Overall it's worth watching, even if it's just to see what all the hype is about.