A Successful Adapted Film

Rating: 9/10 (2 August 2007)

The Simpsons are still running for over 15 years on television as America's favorite animated family. The characters, settings, catchphrases and humor are easily recognizable by fans and non-fans. After a stressful work on the script with over 10 writers and almost 3 years of animation, it gives us a near-perfect lengthy film that can be considered as an episode to the big screen. And by the way, all of the original voice actors are in there including celebrities and brief cameos.
Word on the story says that Homer makes Springfield out of control after a news report found a dumped silo (with Homer's name) under Lake Springfield, which was recently cleaned by the citizens. After the EPA catch a multi-eyed creature caused by the polluted lake, the evil rich EPA head Russ Cargill (Albert Brooks) fools President Schwarzenneger (A brown-haired Wolfcastle) by making him choose one of the 5 unstoppable plans twice, cover Springfield with a glass dome and attempting to bomb Springfield. The Simpson family sets off to hide somewhere safe after escaping the mob by jumping into a sinkhole on a sandbox, discovered by Maggie.
The story worked pretty well for a Simpsons first feature so far. It is completely more focused than the television series, since the script is more intense and deeper yet still retain to cram a load of humor in there. The introduction of new original characters helped though Russ Cargill is usually the most developed new character from beginning to end. However, key characters such as Plopper the Pig and Colin should have more roles but it's the SIMPSONS MOVIE, we need to focus on the family. Ha.
The animation is much, much more detailed, fast-paced and smoother than the series because it is in a widescreen format. It lets the animators to add more frames by making the characters talk with many movements. The angry mob scene worked really well for it's widescreen format. CGI backgrounds and objects are also a nice addition but it makes the 2D animation a bit flat in my opinion.
The voice work in the film is top-notch and showed more expressions than a single episode of the series. All the original actors done their voices but too bad most of them had brief lines such as Skinner and Nelson. Cameos from Green Day and Tom Hanks (Yes, THE Tom Hanks) suits their animated counterpart. The emotional scene of Marge ditching Homer to risk their lives to save Springfield was touching, which I considered to be one of the best scenes in the film.
The humor worked pretty well in it's progress. The first half did have a fistful of sight gags while the other half has a number of comical lines. The nude-boarding with Bart was seriously unpredictable for a PG-13 film, because of a brief...Well, it kinda broke the child nudity rule in an animated film. Some of the humor were flat, such the iron-ball slapstick with Homer was cheesy at it's best, since it's more of a Family Guy gag.
Despite the brief screen time of favorite secondary characters and a partially-broken plot, The Simpsons Movie is an excellent animated film to watch for hardcore fans and film-goers. It raises more hell than Hellraiser that you would desperately want a sequel, which is a possibility.
Props to Matt Groening and his team for doing such a rough work on their first film ever on the Simpsons franchise.