And I conceded to "a couple funny but throw away moments" in an earlier post. Homer giving the bird was another. I reiterate my yawn.

I'm from nearly the same perspective. I perhaps watched one or two more seasons (which I surely did not enjoy), and have been sure to catch at least one or two episodes from each subsequent season, just to reaffirm my belief that the show continues to suck (and I have yet to be proven wrong). But the tired plot lines and character motivations they used in the movie would have been equally tired 8 years ago.

I'll reiterate that I didn't not enjoy it. It just didn't impress me.

Well, to each their own. The group I went with laughed from Ralphie's "da-da-da-daaaaaa!" pretty much until the credits rolled. I though that it WAS more than a string of jokes. Julie Kavner's VO for the wedding video scene was lovely and moving. I thought that it worked very well as stretched-out episode with interesting A, B and C storylines intertwined. And the quotes ("clap for Alaska, Lisa!" among them) were perfectly quotable.

The Simpsons, to me, has never tread the line that South Park does. And I'm OK with that. Where both are critical of society, one uses a subtle wit and one uses bombastic wit, and there's room for both. But I don't see how pushing the subtler one to a more bombastic place would stay true to the Simpsons' form. Bart's doodle was edgy relative to your standard episode (season 1-10.)

I must clarify, I wasn't looking for over-the-line edginess. Although I think that while Bart's doodle is edgy relative to early episodes, I don't think it (or anything in the movie) represents the same edginess relative to society that the early episodes did. But that's a whole other discussion.

What I mean by "more than just an episode" has more to do with actually creating something that matches the scale of the big screen on the whole. Boundary pushing is part of that, but only a small fraction.

To illustrate, I'll say that I think my favorite part was the opening bit. Not the Itchy & Scratchy cartoon itself per-se, but the self aware bit with Homer in the theater afterwards. That, far beyond anything else in the whole movie, showed a keen understanding of how to take the characters from the small screen and do something befitting the big screen. It used the medium in that beautifully self-aware, self-effacing way that The Simpsons once used television. But it peeked in the first 5 minutes and never returned to that. Boo-hiss I say.

That's not to say I wanted 90 minutes of Bart talking into the camera. But that opening got me all excited that they truly did something more than a 90 minute episode. So perhaps that's part of my perspective. In its first hit, it soared well beyond my expectations, and then very quickly plummeted back down to mediocre.

I think it's true that the edge wasn't quite there. Bart's doodle was edgy, yes, and damn funny after all they did to set the joke up (eg: getting all "Austin Powers" with it before hand to keep it blocked and then suddenly blocking everything but), however, the biting wit of the spoken word was no sharper. (However, true to form, I believe there was at least one anti-Disney joke tossed in ;))

I laughed at that joke but then I thought, 'Uh, isn't Fox led by someone evil, too?'
:D

Oh, they made fun of Fox. Remember that "ticker" at the bottom of the screen?

No, I hear you. I just found it odd for one evil corporation to call another evil corporation 'evil'.
:D

All's I know is, saying "Harry Plopper" out loud always brings a smile to my face! :D

I enjoyed it. It made me giggle. There were a couple things they can't do on TV, but for the most part a long episode. But that is all I expected. I thought it was a good story and had clever commentary.

I liked when they got to the Seattle train station. Marge, Lisa and Bart ducked to hide from the EPA people, but Maggie covered her eyes. If a baby can't see you, you can't see her, right?