The Simpsons Movie

Watched The Simpsons Movie in the cinema last night. I’m not a hardcore Simpsons fan although I far from dislike it and will watch it and usually find it amusing if it happens to be on the telly. I won’t make a point of turning the telly on for it though. However, I did think that this film was rather pointless. It really offered nothing more than an average Simpsons episode aside from the fact that it was three times as long. Other than that there’s really nothing to set it apart.

Part of the problem is that I really can’t stand Homer Simpson. Yes, I know he’s supposed to be a stupid, selfish oaf, but it gets too much for me and often episodes turn into All About Homer with scant attention paid to some of the other characters whom I do find genuinely funny, like Patty, Selma, Fat Tony, Apu and Mr. Burns. This movie was no different. I thought it would be a great opportunity to give most if not all the Simpsons characters an outing, but instead it just turned into another story about how stupid Homer is and how he is forced to make amends.

They tried to add a little twist at the end by killing off one of the characters, as they did with Maude Flanders, but they chose such a minor and inconsequential character to kill that it made absolutely no difference. There were some genuinely funny gags in it; indeed the first 20 minutes of the film were very funny, but after that it definitely tailed off and I remember noticing about halfway through that the audience hadn’t laughed for quite a while, and it was a full house mostly comprised of giggly teenagers high on fizzy drinks, so it’s not as if the target market was different.

By all means go and see it if you’re a die-hard Simpsons fan, but otherwise I wouldn’t even bother with the DVD, just wait for it to appear on the television and after the first 30 minutes you’ll wonder why the episode hasn’t finished yet and realise that it must be the movie.