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There are those who argue that Matt Groening's phenomenal yellow-skinned family have seen better days. A decline in the laugh quota has been noticeable in recent years, with nothing to rival classic episodes like Mr. Plow or Who Shot Mr. Burns? Add to that the consistency of shows like South Park and Family Guy and TV's most successful animated series of all time has challengers to its throne.
Setting the scattershot tone of its jokes early by having crayon-eating kid Ralph Wiggum emerge from the 20th Century Fox logo, the audience is dropped straight into a world that has been their second home for the last 20 years—Springfield.
As you'd expect everyone's favourite icon of loveable stupidity Homer Simpson, has got himself, along with the inhabitants of his hometown, in a whole heap of trouble. Adopting a pig ("Spider-Pig, Spider-Pig" is guaranteed to be the phrase of the summer), ignoring long-suffering blue-haired wife Marge and neglecting his own son Bart, the plot takes a topically environmental twist—although being The Simpsons, Lisa's pollution lecture is titled "An Irritating Truth" and proceedings are kept firmly tongue in cheek—that results in Springfield being quarantined and removed from the map. Understandably everyone from Chief Wiggum to Groundskeeper Willie are unhappy so it's down to our "DOH-ting" father to win back his family and save the town.
The biggest challenge was obviously going to be sustaining the format beyond the half hour television slot. For comparison the South Park movie lost its comedy momentum about half way through and in this department The Simpsons Movie has decidedly mixed results. The first half excels to a level Principal Skinner would be proud of and includes moments that rank amongst some of the show's best; never better than the relationship between Homer and his porker pal "Harry Plopper" or countless throwaway lines (none worth spoiling in this review).
The need to accommodate the larger canvas, however, does mean that the plot veers into an enjoyable action-based finale that, although impressive, dilutes the film's belly laugh ratio.
What the leap to the big screen allows, though, are sequences such as the tracking shot through an angry mob that features every single character that has appeared in the cartoon since its conception. The successful aesthetics go a long way to proving that 2-D animation can still survive in this CGI world, a point not lost on the makers when Homer plays an arcade game that features a walrus shooting a dancing penguin, poking fun at the lamentable Happy Feet .
The Simpsons Movie is not afraid to laugh at itself as we spend plenty of time laughing along with it. It is 86 minutes of hilarious familiarity, Spider-Pig, drama (a character death!), action, and enough Homer to suggest that The Simpsons are back. Woo hoo!
Three-and-a-half stars out of five
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