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Eleven credited screenwriters, over two years of rewrites and polishes to more than 100 script drafts, and it comes to this: mediocrity.
The Simpsons Movie crams a dozen or so 24 carat gags into 87 minutes of limp social and political satire, choosing soft targets like disintegrating American family values, the environment and miscommunication between parents and their alienated kids.
If you've seen the four trailers for David Silverman's film, then you've seen all the best moments; everything else is just padding.
Rotund, doughnut-guzzling father Homer (voiced by Castellaneta) is the weak dramatic fulcrum, ignoring the needs of his dutiful wife Marge (Kavner), son Bart (Cartwright), and daughters Lisa (Smith) and Maggie to pursue his trouble-free course through life.
A visit to church ends in chaos when Grampa (Castellaneta) has a vision of impending doom.
"Horrible things are going to happen. People of Springfield, heed this warning: twisted tail, a thousand eyes, trapped forever!" he raves.
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Soon after, Homer adopts a pet pig, which generates an unsightly amount of manure.
So he fills a makeshift silo with the stinking mess and then dumps the putrid matter in Lake Springfield, transforming the beauty spot into toxic hell.
Russ Cargill (Brooks), head of the Environmental Protection Agency, encourages President Schwarzenegger (Shearer) to quarantine the entire town, and Homer's friends and neighbours soon turn on him and his loved ones.
'There is little here that couldn’t be accomplished just as well on the small screen'
The d'oh-zy father cannot escape the consequences of his reckless actions and he must change the habits of a lifetime to save Springfield and heal the wounds of his splintered family.
The Simpsons Movie cries out, unheard, for imagination and invention.
Each of the family members has their own flimsy dramatic arc.
Homer and Marge put their marriage under the microscope, Bart debates whether his father loves him, Maggie utters her first word (during the end credits) and green campaigner Lisa develops a crush on Irish boy Colin (MacNeille), whose father is "definitely not Bono".
"I didn't tell you the best thing," Lisa tells her mother as she coos about Colin, "he's not imaginary!"
Half-hearted sideswipes at Al Gore (Lisa presents a lecture entitled An Irritating Truth), Alaska and Disney (Bart wears a black bra to look like mouse ears and chuckles "I'm the mascot of an evil corporation!") fail to draw blood.
A couple of sequences take full advantage of the widescreen format - Bart skateboarding naked through town and the march of the torch-wielding lynch mob - but on the whole, there is little here that couldn't be accomplished just as well on the small screen.
To echo the sentiments of Homer in the Itchy and Scratchy themed prologue: "I can't believe we're paying for something you can get for free on television at home."
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