God this is a funny movie. That's what I thought at first. Apart from one episode, I hadn't watched any new Simpsons for perhaps eight years, so I wasn't sure what to expect. I'd heard lots of bad things - but this was hilarious. The machine-gun fast gags were as funny as I ever remembered them being. By the end of the movie, I was thinking, "wow - that was so funny!"

Then I looked at the DVD player, and discovered it was showing 27:50 mins. i.e, a bit longer than a regular episode.

I thought, "oh. wow. This film can bend time", and I persisted. And it got to 40 minutes, and I started thinking, "This thing has been going for hours, and it doesn't really have much of a story. It's still pretty funny, though."

At 61 minutes I thought, "Oh, God, I can't take any more of this. I'm getting old", and hit 'eject'.

And there's the rub folks. It's the same problem as 'South Park' and damn near any other movie based on a 22:30 min per episode TV show. Yes, the writing (by which I mean the jokes, not the plot) was great, but it just isn't meant to last for over an hour. It's exhausting. It has no space to breathe.

From the gag writing on display here, I suspect The Simpsons is still better than a lot of people have led me to believe, but you just can't stretch that format out into a feature film - especially with such an insubstantial plot.

The best I can say for it is that it's encouraged me to start catching the TV show again, but as a movie..... nope, sorry.