Saw The Simpsons film on Wednesday with the family. It was a bit of a disappointment to be totally honest. The story line was weak, the jokes were thin on the ground, and a lot of the humour was quite crude and was centred on vulgarities and violence.

The plot focused on Homer having to save Springfield from nuclear annihilation, after he had dumped pig fæces in the lake - and thus caused an environmental catastrophe, resulting in Springfield being isolated in a big glass dome and removed from the maps.

The idea was quite clever, though a little spurious in the best Simpsons tradition. It is just that there was barely any more plot in a 90 minute film than there is in a 23 minute episode. The whole film almost a sequence of short story-lines with a common theme running through to piece it all as a plot; notable highlights being Bart’s naked skateboard through Springfield and Homer’s antics with SpiderPig.

Unfortunately, most of the smarter moments were in the first half of the film, the second half was not as slick and the scenes in Alaska were not up to par. One thing The Simpsons does well on television is portray emotion. The film struggled to do this, and was weaker for it.

I would say that for The Simpsons fans, the film is a must-see on DVD, but a 7 from 10 at the Cinema. (The deleted scenes and extras on the DVD will be worth the cost of buying it alone). However, as a standalone film, judged purely on its own merit, I give The Simpsons Movie a 5 out of 10.

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