Top 100 Films. 87. The Simpsons Movie (2007)

One of the most iconic animations ever created finally got their feature film released in 2007. In a time which many professed that the show had jumped the shark and quality had diminished it was time to see if the creators of the show could pull of a quality feature length episode of The Simpsons.

The story of the Simpsons family for their movie outing centered around the environment. The Springfield lake was in disarray and was almost on the point of being hugely damaging to the environment so Springfield proclaimed that no one could dump any waste into the lake. This is followed by every resident, except Homer who dumps a silo full of pig excrement into the lake so he could quickly nab free donuts. This puts the lake into jeopardy and the Environmental Protection Agency places a glass dome over Springfield. The films then follows the Simpson family on how they are going to get out of this sticky situation.

TV animation spin-offs into feature films don’t really work, previously working on a 25 minute running time to increase it by threefold or sometimes four isn’t that effective. Bigger is not always better. However The Simpsons had an advantage. The Simpsons at this point had been on air for just under 20 years. It had created a vast environment of loved characters that was well known throughout many generations. We have all watched the series, played the video games and listen to the theme tune (And do The Bartman!) The Simpsons have been ingrained into popular culture for decades and will be for future generations to come. Their hurdle of going from 22 minute episodes to a 90 minute feature film was not difficult because of the hundreds of characters and places that every person with a television set had heard of. The 90 minutes gave nearly every character at least one moment of hilarity. If anything this is a perfect experience to get a taste of every crevice of Springfield.

The Simpsons Movie is a perfect case of being bigger and better. The whole glass dome plot would never suffice in a normal episode. The jokes were tunred up to 10 and there were moments that really did astound me as a viewer as I never thought that I would see Bart Simpson’s penis. The Simpsons Movie is also a very quotable film there is not a day that goes by that I don’t laugh at the Yard Trimming line and Spiderpig was everywhere back in 2007. It was as popular ringtone then that blemish that is the crazy frog. It was just refreshing to finally see the world’s most loved family finally hit the big screen. The animation looked fresher, a lot of the jokes hit and you can really see the amount of time and effort put into this film.

The film is not perfect and still holds some wrongs that have been past over from flaws of the recent TV episodes. They focus too much on Homer’s stupidity and some of the pop culture references are outdated in the matter of years. However the film is still full of laughs, great celebrity cameo’s, fantastic memorable moments from the side characters. The Simpsons Movie is a very good feature length episode. This is not on the quality of Homer at the Bat or The Monorail but just like every Simpsons fan, A good dose of Simpsons with the increased running time is a fantastic combination.