Very Good But Not Simpsons Great

Rating: 6/10 (28 July 2007)

I am a long time fan of the show. I thought they should do a movie and looked forward to the movie, but if you really appreciate the amount of action, the willy-nilly progress of plot development, and the pow-pow-pow of the comments and references of the half hour show, it is natural to be a bit cautious about the onset of a 90 minute (or so) version therof.
Did my duty, skipped work in order to view the Simpsons movie on its first outing.
It lived up to the Simpsons characters and to the depiction of history as: "just a lot of stuff that happens." If you are an Alaskan, you are in for a special treat. 'Nuff said.
Although it has some must-see moments, all in all it's not a lot more than the average television episode crams into the half-hour slot of its existence. (And less than is sardined into the three stories per half hour of the Halloween specials).
There were Simpsonic characteristics that were simply missing in action: Weird plot twists - The movie gives no sense of the incredible ADD leaps that can take place in the first five minutes of a standard Simpsons episode.
Attention to characters and objects. In the movie, several characters show up and then kind of disappear, or seem underutilized.
Conclusion: Definitely worth seeing, but suffers from lack of compression. Some aspects borrowed from Futurama. If you are not a Simpson show watcher, this is a good intro. The TV show packs more punch in shorter jabs.