I only saw the "Simpsons" shorts that first appeared on the "Tracey Ullman Show" intermittently, but I liked them enough that I was there in front of the TV for the first full-length episode of the soon-to-be-legendary show, "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire," on December 17, 1989. And I was there weekly for every new episode for the next several years, my Sunday and, later, Thursday nights spoken for. Like many viewers, I began missing occasional episodes by the fifth or sixth season and stopped watching the show altogether a few years later. But I still recall literally hundreds of jokes from dozens of episodes and swap them with friends regularly (more regularly, in all likelihood, than my friends would like). Thus I approached The Simpsons Movie with some trepidation. The occasional glimpses I've had of the show over the last several years have sometimes amused, but none have made me consider watching the show again; the falloff from the glory days is just too steep. The good news about the movie is that (so far as I can tell) it's a great deal funnier than the show these days. The bad news is that it's still not nearly as funny as the show once was. There were plenty of decent jokes, but I've already forgotten most of them; I suspect within a month's time I'll be hard pressed to recall much about the movie at all beyond a vague sense of disappointment. I'm not entirely sure what went wrong. There are a few obvious shortcomings: Many favorite peripheral figures--Apu, Principal Skinner, Mr. Burns--receive little screen time, and Bart is unconscionably mopey throughout, displaying none of his renegade wit and instead joining Marge and Lisa in the eye-rolling, why-is-Homer-such-a-loser brigade. But I think the deeper problem is that the movie is so broad and unfocused, in terms of humor, plot, and even geography. The early "Simpsons" episodes were so tightly written: From the first, relatively simple season through later years when multiple plot strands were expertly interwoven, each episode had a clear arc and generally found its laughs without having to wander too far afield. My sense (again, from exceptionally limited viewing) of more recent years is that the show has had to work harder for its laughs, that the situations have become more absurd and many of the jokes more random. Put differently, "The Simpsons" seems to have drifted a little in the direction of "Family Guy," which, while often hilarious, essentially gives itself permission to do anything, go anywhere for a laugh--and somehow these laughs, even when hearty ones, are less satisfying than ones more deftly integrated into the overall story. This certainly felt the case to me with The Simpson's Movie: Several jokes--e.g., a "love scene" between Marge and Homer, in which cute, Disneyesque animals tear their clothes from them--felt like comic vignettes awkwardly shoehorned in. And while some of this scattered sensibility may be the inevitable result of a theatrical running time, I can't help but believe that a Simpsons movie made fifteen years ago would have held together much better. (Readers--especially those with more experience of recent years of the show--are welcome to share alternative theories and views.) There are plenty of good elements in the film. Albert Brooks, the best guest voice the show has ever had, has a substantial role as a Romneyesque head of the EPA, even if it can't quite compare with his early turns as Cowboy Bob and, especially, Jacques the bowling instructor in "Life in the Fast Lane." (The improvised outtakes from that episode, available on the DVD, are the best evidence I've seen for the New Yorker's long-ago contention that Brooks was the funniest man in America.) And the syrupy "Close to You" scene, in which Homer recognizes the error of his ways, captures the show's inherent sweetness awfully well. But in the end, while perfectly diverting, The Simpsons Movie just wasn't that funny--at least not in the way that would have me quoting its gags (as I do lines from "Bart the Lover," "Homer the Heretic," several "Treehouses of Horror," and countless other episodes) weeks, months, or even decades from now. ---Christopher Orr