The classic cartoon is transformed into a disappointingly mediocre film The Simpsons Movie (PG)dir: David Silverman

Whenever there's a nostalgic TV documentary concerning Fawlty Towers, one of the interviewees invariably mentions the proposed film of that sitcom, which was to have pitted Basil Fawlty against aeroplane hijackers (wouldn't that have been hilarious today?). Fawlty Towers the Movie never made it off the runway, thank goodness, but fans of The Simpsons haven't had such a lucky escape.

As I watched The Simpsons Movie, I imagined a parallel universe where the show's production team reflected on the film they had planned, in which Homer Simpson sparks a public health disaster by dumping tonnes of pig excrement in Springfield's rivers, causing the town to be sealed within a giant dome and targeted for annihilation by the US government. "We were all set to make it," I can hear the show's creator, Matt Groening, saying, "and then we thought: 'You can have too much of a good thing. Why spoil it?'" Oh, if only.

The weight of expectation on The Simpsons Movie has been so colossal that nothing short of a cameo appearance by the ghost of Lady Diana could live up to the hype. What you get from the film is exactly what most episodes have delivered for the past 18 years: five or six solid laughs, some violent slapstick and acerbic gibes, and a celebrity appearance. The main difference is that each programme lasts around 25 minutes, whereas The Simpsons Movie is more than three times that length. You do the math, as they say. One of the film's 12 writers, the co-producer Al Jean, insists that it is not simply three episodes of the TV show strung together. He's right. It feels instead like a protracted single instalment, but without the remote control close at hand.

Springfield has been spiced up with the sort of sights you don't get on television. We see more of Bart (voiced by Nancy Cartwright) than ever before when Homer (Dan Castellaneta) goads him into skateboarding naked. The mute infant Maggie utters a rare word (though you'll have to sit through the end credits to hear what she says), and there is a love story for Lisa (Yeardley Smith), who swoons over the son of an Irish rock star. Homer teeters on the brink of bestiality with his pet pig, and drags the family off to Alaska after his little deposit in the river becomes public knowledge.

Frustratingly, Marge (Julie Kavner) has almost nothing to do, but then it's one of the peculiarities of The Simpsons Movie that a bigger canvas has resulted in the more eccentric characters (Smithers and Mr Burns, Principal Skinner, Apu) being all but painted out. Occasional details have the ring of genius - Chief Wiggum eating doughnuts off the barrel of his gun, or Bart defacing a "Wanted" poster, with surreal consequences. But Springfield has never looked so thin and underpopulated, regardless of the effort expended in drawing convincing crowd scenes. The picture pads out the show's format with the very elements that it has flourished perfectly well without, from lifelike shading to all-out mawkishness. Anyone who believes that what The Simpsons has been missing all these years is a big tear-jerking scene will jump for joy when Marge walks out on Homer. The rest of us will ask who's in charge, and what they've done with our favourite show.

Perhaps the biggest shock in The Simpsons Movie is the audience. What, you wonder, are they all doing here? Seeing the film in a packed cinema is a genuinely disorienting experience, as it would be if hundreds of strangers crammed into your living room while you watched Coronation Street or Newsnight or When Good Lap Dancers Turn Bad. And the stakes are so much higher with cinema. The gags that die leave in their wake not only disappointment, but silence on the soundtrack where our laughter has been optimistically anticipated.

The Simpsons is too robust to be tarnished by one mediocre film spin-off, but, to restore your faith, I'd recommend digging out a classic episode - A Fish Called Selma, say, which features the great Stop the Planet of the Apes, I Want to Get Off! musical, or Homer's Phobia, with John Waters as Marge's gay best friend. On this occasion only, I have to concede that television has the edge over cinema.

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