17th August, 2007

DAVID ADAMS

The Simpsons Movie (PG)

In A Word: Predictable

"Bigger doesn’t necessarily mean better. And, given this was the Simpsons first foray onto the big screen, maybe that’s an opportunity lost for creator Matt Groening and his team."

If one expects nothing more than the Simpsons TV show gone large, you won’t be disappointed. Sure, there’s some funny parts (and, as it is with the Simpsons), there’s also some parts you wish weren’t there but on the whole the Simpsons movie doesn’t little to break new ground.

The usual cast is all there - Homer (voiced, as ever, by Dan Castellaneta), Marge (Julie Kavner), Bart (Nancy Cartwright), Lisa (Yeardley Smith), and Maggie (no voice required) as well as the other inhabitants of Springfield that we’ve come to know so well - Ned Flanders, Police Chief Wiggum, publican Moe and Principal Seymour Skinner among them - but maybe it’s the fact that we do know them so well that we’re expecting something special in the movie which never eventuates.

There was something somehow redeeming about the Simpsons in the early episodes - think of the time Homer bunked off from his marriage enrichment weekend with Marge to go fishing only to dump the monster fish he caught when he decided his marriage was far more important.

In later episodes, episodes though, much of that redeeming charm seems to have disappeared and the movie - which it winds things up in the usual way - is more in that style. The Homer here is the oafish clod of the smaller screen, but without the big heart that was once evident, and the satire is sharp (although at times, a little overdone - the endless jokes about the Fox network are getting slightly tired) but without the softening at the edges.

Simpsons fans will enjoy it just for the references to the TV show - the chance to see their favorite characters on the big screen as in a storyline that in true Simpsons fashion, takes a while to get going, Homer once again brings pariah status to his family and leads that out of Springfield to a new life in, of all places, Alaska.

Bigger doesn’t necessarily mean better. And, given this was the Simpsons first foray onto the big screen, maybe that’s an opportunity lost for creator Matt Groening and his team.

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