 Variety 's Brian Lowry called it " clever , irreverent , satirical and outfitted " but that it was " just barely " capable of sustaining a running time longer than a television episode . Lisa Schwarzbaum praised the voice cast but stated that the " ' action ' sequences sometimes falter " . When comparing the film to the early episodes of the show , Stephen Rowley concluded that the film " has more going for it than the show in its later years , but is still a long way short of what made it so invigorating " . The Monthly critic Luke Davies echoed Lowry 's concerns about the length : " everything moves with the whip @-@ crack speed of a half @-@ hour episode . And that 's the paradox : it makes the film feel like three episodes strung together . We 're in a cinema , and we expect something epic . " He opined that " in the great arc that is the history of The Simpsons , this film will come to be seen as oddity rather than apotheosis . " 
