Almost twenty years in the making, this was a massive project, staffed by hundreds on an international scale. The world had been waiting with rapt anticipation since the project was first announced, and many believed it was impossible, that it would simply never happen. And then it did.

Yes, the inaugural flight of the Concorde, the Anglo-French aeronautical powerhouse took place in 1969 after being in development since the 1950s, and it was worth the wait. Commercial flights started some years later, but at last it had happened.

Oh, The Simpsons Movie? That also took around two decades from idea to launch, but does it crash and burn like a Conc[Snip - Ed.]

Let’s be honest, The Simpsons in movie form was always going to be an extended episode rather than something radical and new, but the key worry was would it be in the style of the classic episodes, intricately plotted and often raucously funny, or the latter-day episodes, full of slap-stick humour and slap-dash plots, and far less funny?

The answer is somewhere between the two. The plot is fairly decent, though nothing out of the ordinary; Springfield is found to be the most polluted town in the USA, thanks in no small part to the efforts of Homer, and is encased in a protective dome, isolating the town and forcing Homer and family to escape to start a new life elsewhere. So far, so standard.

Bart develops a new character trait, deciding that Homer is too buffoonish to be a true father figure so bizarrely and suddenly idolising Ned Flanders, and it is this change of opinion of Homer that is the true driving force of the film; Bart’s feelings against Homer are contagious and lead to the separation of Marge and Homer. Again.

This is where the extra length works; we’ve seen Marge and Homer split up on countless occasions in the television series, always with the sense that they would be together again by the end of the episode with little effort on Homer’s part to make right his mistakes. In the film however, Marge is given the time to explain her rationale for leaving Homer; it’s heartfelt, poignant and moving.

With the family gone, Homer is left to realise what he has done wrong and how to put it right. Obviously he does, as we all know the series continues anyway, so there’s no need to go into the details of what happens – it works out as you would expect, so I’m not going to ruin it for you, even if I am the last person in the western world to have seen the film.

The strength of this film lies in the plot; it really does feel far more epic than any recent episode of the series and you really feel that the writers went the extra mile on the story. The dialogue is at times emotional, but never over the top.

It’s just a shame they have largely forgotten to put many jokes in. There are a lot of good visual gags, but they were mainly seen months ago in the trailers. The majority of the other “funny” moments seem to be standard late-era Simpsons fare; irrelevant wackiness, Homer behaving like a moron, re-hashed jokes from early episodes (oh look, another creature with more than two eyes!). Nngh.

It’s a shame, because the film really could have been better. It’s perhaps not a surprise though, with a team of eleven writers and over one hundred re-writes that the jokes are a bit of a mess.

It’s also a shame because this film looks excellent; the extra time and staff allotted to the film production means that the team got to radically improve the artistic style. It’s still obviously The Simpsons, but everything is now far more detailed and more finely crafted. In fact very similar to the Futurama style of animation, which the Simpsons briefly experimented with in a couple of episodes in the early part of this decade.

The sound is mediocre; the voice talent is excellent as usual (and at least the film didn’t descend into needless and poorly scripted celebrity cameos, as would have been so easy), but the score itself is average. The Simpsons used to pride itself on the use of music, whole episodes being performed as musicals, MGM parodies and the like. There’s no real room for that here, just a bunch of orchestral gumph that is well produced, but not particularly imaginative.

I was a bit disheartened with the film really, though not surprised; I wasn’t expecting a radical re-interpretation of the characters for the big-screen – though it would have been pleasing for the writers to actually use some more of the regular cast, especially as the likes of Apu and Principal Skinner can be far funnier than the central family – and a radical re-interpretation was not delivered. Nor was the funny film that it could have been though. A bit of a shame, then.

FAXBOX
Story
A decent plot, let down by a lack of good gags and set pieces.
65%
Visuals
Brilliantly rendered and gorgeous looking interpretation of Springfield.
80%
Sound
Off the rack.
60%
The Interest Factor
Found myself cutting my toenails halfway through, so perhaps not that gripping.
55%
Overall
Late-series Simpsons gags with early-series plots, done big.
65%