As you may (possibly) have heard by now, there’s now a movie version of the The Simpsons TV series.
The plot is pretty simple: Homer does something stupid, it was horrible consequences for the town, and as a result Marge and the family get very annoyed by him.
But *The Simpsons* has never really been about the brilliance of the plot. It’s about the writing and the jokes. And the strength of the writing is unlike anything seen on TV for some years – I suspect there’s been a lot of writers saving the good jokes for the movie. There isn’t a *lot* of the movie taking advantage of the things that can’t be done on television, but a few jokes do make good use of the big screen in one way or another.
The animation is fantastic, with some amazing visuals at various points. It’s not up to the quality of Pixar, but it’s still pretty good. The best thing is that it takes the larger-than-life quality of the designs in the TV series and scales them up, rather than trying to make them more realistic.
This movie is exactly what you should expect: a really good episode of The Simpsons. Nothing more, nothing less. If you’ve ever enjoyed The Simpsons, go and see it.