The Simpsons Movie

David Silverman’s 2007 feature is less the series moved to cinema than the series stretched across a frame twice as wide. It was produced at 2.40:1 to separate it from the television show, still narrow at the time, so a share of the jokes now sits at the edges of the picture rather than the centre. The screenplay was rewritten more than a hundred times, and the rewriting carried on after animation started in 2006. Hours of finished material were cut, including guest appearances by Edward Norton, Isla Fisher, Minnie Driver and Kelsey Grammer. Matt Groening turned down both live action and computer animation, and the result is hand drawn and deliberately imperfect. Hans Zimmer built the spider pig song into a choral piece as a joke he never meant to reach the film. What actually drives the story is the break between Homer and Bart, not the dome and not the pollution. The official on the other side is barely written, so the environmental argument never lands anywhere. A good fit if you will hunt for gags parked at the edge of the widened frame and accept that the real subject is a father and son falling out. Not for you if you want the argument the dome opens to be resolved.