Movie a soft serving of the Simpsons

The Simpsons Movie, directed by David Silverman (PG). Movie Meter: 3/5

Years ago now, so long that some viewers will have grown up with it, an animated series with yellow, blue and garish as the key colours turned up on US television.

Viewers became so addicted to the mom, dad, son, daughter, and pacifier-sucking baby that nation after nation signed up for the programme which seemed to take the mick out of almost every sacred US cow.

Part of the appeal was its scurrilously penetrating dissection of US culture, satire in its best sense, even if it lacked subtlety.

But the greatest seller was that very lack. Without subtlety, and with a heavy-handed gross comic style, it had huge appeal for viewers who have not come from a generation exposed to the wit and humour of the great wordsmithing satirists from Wilde to Kerouac.

This is money-spinning franchise territory. Cashing in on the fashion of turning successful television into feature-length stretchers, this movie falls into the inevitable trap. It is really little more than a bunch of gags of the kind one finds in the series, a feature-length television programme as it were.

That does not mean it is not entertaining and funny. It is, but it lacks the punch and directness of a single programme hit.

Perhaps it is the material, but more likely the fact there were 11 screenwriters putting the story together meant a serious loss of focus and development.

The first 20 or so minutes of set-up is hilarious. The 20th Century Fox logo has Bart sitting on the top singing, badly, Strike Up The Band, then it opens on a film starring mice as US citizens, including the president who unleashes a bunch of nukes at the moon, during which Homer, in the audience watching that movie, stands up and calls us suckers for paying for what we could watch at home.

Bart is seen writing lines "I will not illegally download this movie", and a pop band with a greenie message, which causes them to be pelted with rubbish by an enraged Springfield audience, sinks into the now-toxic lake.

After that there is only a series of set-pieces in lieu of a coherent narrative: grandad prophesying in church, Bart skateboarding in the nude, President Schwarzenegger agreeing to drop an isolating dome on toxic Springfield, Homer making friends with a pig, the family heading for safety in Alaska where they are given $1000 per person "to allow the oil companies to ravage our natural beauty", and finally back to Springfield to remove the dome and save the town.

Oh, it is funny. Most viewers will be stoked. But these are easy shots, there is an uneasy feeling the environmental message is a quisling in our midst, an appeaser which softens the bite of the early writing.

Perhaps the Fox masters wanted the box office cash without the risk of offending various Right-minded lobby groups. Whatever, we, the audience are the losers. In my book, this is soft-serve Simpsons.

- © Fairfax NZ News