Meh.
It was as good as I could have reasonably expected. That is to say, it was good. Not great but not bad. It neither disappointed me (did I ever mention how big a letdown Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story was?) nor infuriated me (don't even get me started on the Hitchhiker's Guide movie!).
SPOILERS onward.
OMFG Bart is hung! Best sight gag ever, and I'm unashamed by how crude this is. They set it up perfectly.
That sight gag and the funeral arrangement of American Idiot were by far the two highlights of the movie.
They made judicious use of celebrity cameos: Green Day. Tom Hanks. As far as I could tell that's it. (Albert Brooks, the former Hank Scorpio, doesn't count.) Even at that the cameos weren't self-serving; if anything the Hanks was a neat bit of self-parody.
Aside from that:
Travel to an interesting destination for the sake of going there: check (at least they didn't exploit Alaska too much).
Homer's harebrained scheme: check.
Marge gets mad enough at Homer that their marriage is in jeopardy: check.
Political humor that seems vaguely cutting-edge until you realize it's standard issue center-left CW: check. (This is part of what makes either Family Guy or South Park so comparatively interesting.)
The motorcycle jump not even coming close to making it over the canyon is a nice allusion to one of my least-favorite of the early episodes. Bart's slingshot recovery almost redeems that scene 17 years after the fact.
I liked the end credit bits. This is actually around the point that I started mentally comparing the movie to, of all things, Dodgeball. That was a much funnier movie (Julia says "Of course! That had Ben Stiller") but obviously as live action it doesn't have the stunningly beautiful animation.
Twenty years from now the rest of this movie will be amiable mediocrity but it will be a fantastic piece of artwork until the technology comes along to make animation even more achingly beautiful.
Oh, one last thing: Both Julia and I absolutely adored the Disney parody involved in the birds-and-deer bit with Homer and Marge about to make love.
Posted by Matt Bruce at July 27, 2007 11:31 PMI enjoyed it thoroughly and I am pretty sure that upon repeated views, I'll pick up some of the subtleties that I missed the first time. I will say that it had a lot more heart than the recent television outings and a lot of good sight gags. Perfect, no, but not a disappointment, even with pretty high expectations.
Posted by: Craig D. Barker at July 28, 2007 02:37 PMOK, one question: where was Kang? I noticed a credit for Kang, but don't recall seeing him/her/it in the film.
Posted by: Mark at July 28, 2007 07:17 PM