The Simpsons Movie

Year: 2007
Running time: 87 minutes
Certificate: PG
Language: English
Screenplay: James L. Brooks, Matt Groening, Al Jean, Ian Maxtone-Graham, George Meyer, David Mirkin, Mike Reiss, Mike Scully, Matt Selman, John Swartzwelder, Jon Vitti
Director: David Silverman
Starring (voices): Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright, Yeardley Smith, Hank Azaria, Harry Shearer, Pamela Hayden, Tress MacNeille, Albert Brooks

Homer is not having a good day.

The Simpsons starts its 32nd season later this year, so there doesn't seem a whole lot of point in giving too much detail into the history or background of the show; suffice to say if you have any knowledge of western popular culture since 1989 then you'll be somewhat familiar with America's first family of comedy. It’s generally agreed that the show was at its very best around season five, and jumped the shark at around season 10, and since then although it’s still pretty damn funny, it’s just not been at the heights it used to scale in practically every episode.

The Simpsons Movie did nothing to change that, but even so, The Simpsons on a poor day is still a fair bit funnier than most of the other stuff out there. Even while not being on par with the best the show had to offer, this has plenty of laugh-out-loud moments, such as Green Day’s cameo performance in which they are killed in the first few minutes (playing violins while going down with their floating stage), the death of Dr Nick Riviera (Hank Azaria) (“Bye everybody!”), Bart’s (Nancy Cartwright) penis, and, of course, Spider-Pig. Not to mention the whole Springfield-in-a-bubble idea is an immediately funny premise without knowing anything about the rest of the story.

The bubble is really a dome placed over Springfield to prevent the residents getting away after the town is marked for destruction by President Arnold Schwarzenegger (Harry Shearer). He's convinced to do this by the director of the EPA, Russ Cargill (Albert Brooks). Cargill wants to destroy Springfield because the lake was polluted. The lake was polluted when Homer (Dan Castellaneta) dumped a silo full of pig waste in there a few days after rescuing Spider-Pig from slaughter at Krusty Burger. The Simpsons escape the dome and set off to start a new life in Alaska. Eventually, they decide they have to return and try to save their home town, although Homer takes longer to convince and goes on a bit of an odyssey before returning to take on the mission to try to fix the problem he caused. Yep, the plot is bonkers.

Shock, and indeed, horror.

It does, at times, even stir other emotional responses, such as the scene in which Homer watches Marge’s (Julie Kavner) goodbye video, and seeing the noose and pacifier combo especially made for Maggie (Nancy Cartwright, again) was a shock.

Of course, with it being The Simpsons, you might expect a much higher joke hit rate (it is pretty high, especially in the first and final acts, but the show has an exceptionally high bar to clear), but maybe these things are more difficult to maintain over the longer running time. One of the reasons I think the jokes are thinner on the ground than expected is the repeated test screenings the producers had in order to whittle out any jokes that didn’t instantly make an audience laugh – some of the more subtle jokes likely found themselves cut.

On the whole, not as great as hoped, but certainly not as bad as feared.

Score: 7/10

The Simpsons Movie is better reviewed out there than I thought it would be - see these reviews from Chris at Den of Geek and Mitch Eveleigh.