Simpsons Schmimpsons

Rating: 3/10 (2 September 2007)

Oh dear. If you knew how much I loved the Simpsons for the first eight or nine seasons... It was groundbreaking TV; the funniest, slyest, most subversive, most honest programme on the box, and I couldn't get enough of it. Each episodes rewarded repeated viewing to catch all the references to film and TV, as well as politics and real-life situations. Then some of the key writers started to drift away, and so did my enthusiasm. The show became only sporadically funny, often irritating, overly reliant on guest stars, and at times unnecessarily surreal. What had essentially been a story of a dysfunctional family that echoed (though sometimes in bizarre ways) the dilemmas that many families faced, became just another cartoon sitcom. And this film shares all the faults of the latter-day TV seasons, with some new problems thrown in... From a barnstorming twenty-odd minutes (including Ralph Wiggum's appearance before the film even starts!) the film becomes a polemic about green issues, Homer is even more intractably stupid than ever, Bart is almost completely sidelined with the Flanders, Monty Burns hardly gets a look-in... It really would have been a great TV episode (hence the first twenty minutes!!), but becomes tiresome and repetitive - Homer's done the stupidity redeemed shlock quite a few times in the series, and his method of self-discovery just doesn't ring true. There are some great jokes in this film, but only enough to fill an average early-season episode. I did love "Eski-Moe's" though! Maybe I'm being harsh; after all, this isn't bad, and WAY better than your average American comedy film, but expectations were so high...