I saw The Simpsons Movie earlier on but wasn’t blown away.

It was good and I enjoyed it but it just lacked the “wow” factor. It was just a long episode. In fairness, with the series having been on the go for 18 years there was no way it was going to meet the hype.

And, let’s be honest here, when you find the high point of a film is a cameo by your favourite band — in this case Green Day — something’s gone awry. (Incidentally I liked how they used the band’s real names in the credits: Frank Edwin Wright III instead of Tré Cool and Michael Pritchard instead of Mike Dirnt.)

In hindsight I’m not really sure what else the producers could have done. There are certain expectations when one watches The Simpsons, expectations regarding style, humour topics, etc. and this film met those. Unfortunately it didn’t really build on them which disappointed me.

Also, there was very little scope for the auxillary characters. Ms Krabappel and Groundskeeper Willie have no speaking roles as far as I remember, while Comic Book Guy is relegated to two scenes — one of which was a cheesy “life well spent collecting comic books” line.

Come to think of it, the film was one of those that clipped along at a fair old pace without hooking me in. Perhaps the producers were too conscious of the audience being accustomed to a 23-minute show and so ploughed ahead as fast as possible to keep their attention.

Final verdict: a good watch, but not one a film you’d need to see more than once.

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