The Simpson family ends up in Alaska for part of "The Simpsons Movie.'

Homer has the cutest new porker of a pet -- so cute, he calls him Spider-Pig and holds him up to put hoofprints on the ceiling. Marge is not amused. Neither is ever-serious daughter Lisa. She's busy sounding the alarm via her environmental slideshow ("An Irritating Truth") about Code Black pollution in Lake Springfield.

Thus rises our cartoon curtain on "The Simpsons Movie," long-awaited animated feature spun off from the little screen onto the big one. It's a promising start. Everyone is convinced of the impending crisis -- except Homer, of course, who blithely ignores all warnings and dumps a silo full of pig caca into the lake. That produces multi-eyed mutants in the lake and a clairvoyant warning from Grampa in church. Normally found reading Oatmeal Enthusiast quietly at home, he has an evangelistic vision, heralding the government's evil plan to seal off Springfield under a Bucky Fuller-type dome.

Homer Simpson generates an environmental catastrophe in the big-screen debut of the "The Simpsons." Click photo for larger image. 'The Simpsons Movie' Voices of: Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright, Yeardley Smith, Hank Azaria, Harry Shearer, Tom Hanks. Director: David Silverman. Rating: PG-13 for irreverent humor throughout. Web site: www.simpsonsmovie.com Related stories Cartoon families make giant leap to the big screen Family Film Guide Previous coverage After 400 episodes, The Simpsons finally make it to the big screen Simpsons for Dummies: 18 facts about America's longest-running sitcom

A furious lynch mob comes after Homer, hands clutching to get at him through the bolted door. It's Night of the Animated Dead. But with crucial assistance from baby Maggie, the Simpsons escape to Alaska, where Homer is thrilled to learn that "every resident gets $1,000 to let the oil companies ravage our land."

Life is good there. Cute little Disney bluebirds and Bambi fawns flitter around Homer and Marge before they have sex. But when she finds out what Homer did, she takes the kids and heads back home, unaware that a Doomsday Device inside the dome will soon destroy not just Springfield but the whole world. Homer, in turn, after an Innuit-induced hallucinogenic epiphany, resolves to return and rescue everybody.

Eighteen years, 400 TV episodes and 23 Emmys in the making, "The Simpsons Movie" screenplay was written by creator Matt Groening, James L. Brooks and no fewer than 13 other kibitzers -- more than 100 drafts and two years of rewrites. Talk about cooks spoiling broth. According to one of them, "We had to expand our thinking and get out of the 22 minute-structure of sitcom storytelling."

Big Mistake. Cramming as many visual and verbal gags as possible into a small time framework and overlapping them in a madcap pace is precisely what made the TV shows so wonderful -- and what "The Movie" lacks. Hi-fallutin' substitution of "mood," "motivation" and "scale" in this 90-minute format is what dilutes its comic impact -- notably, an overemphasis on Homer's parenting guilt (with Flanders becoming Bart's surrogate father figure). Its cutting edge is further dulled by the choice of satirically easy (but constitutionally impossible) Arnold Schwarzenegger as the incumbent U.S. president, instead of targeting the more politically piquant Dubya or Hillary.

In a Simpsons romp, the fun is in the details and there are some wonderful ones here -- such as the signs in front of Springfield Church ("Though shalt turn off thy cell phones") and on the Duff Beer blimp ("Binge Responsibly") -- but not enough.

By far the funniest sequence is a gratuitous one in which Homer dares Bart to skateboard naked downtown for a Krustyburger ("If you can find a greasier sandwich, you're in Mexico!") He does so with a variety of fast-moving fig leaves until a break in a fence reveals all -- at which point a boy bystander says, "I like men now!"

Although we rarely lead you into the quicksand of critical theory, the pop-cultural phenomenon of the Simpsons demands it. I'm thinking of the fabulous baseball episode a decade or so ago -- a brilliant sociopolitical spoof in which Homer gets a shot at national attention and personal fulfillment as a mascot for the Capital City team.

One of the best TV genre-parodies and social commentaries of all time, it featured the worst-ever rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" (a slow, heavily ornamented blues version, by the end of which the entire crowd has fallen collectively asleep).

With production values equal to subject matter, the best "Simpsons" entries of the past were full of wide-and-high angles, fast zooms and unpredictable flights of surreal fancy -- all in short supply here in "The Movie."

Still, the iconic characters and their tragicomically familiar family dynamics are intact: Marge still just wants to keep the peace; brat Bart is still out of control; sister Lisa is still self-righteously romantic -- and the real star of the show is still Homer, hero and anti-hero alike, epitome of the national character: a schlemiel redeemed by simpleminded American optimism. Homer as Everyman or Everyfather, trying to keep up or catch up on things not worth keeping or catching up with.

Much more could be said on the Simpsons' semiotic significance and structural isomorphism, but as Voltaire teaches us, "The secret to being tiresome is to tell everything," and we sense you nodding off at the mention, let alone full exegesis, of structural isomorphism. Suffice to say, "The Simpsons Movie," in aspiring to higher artistry as well as lower entertainment, fully succeeds at neither.

Sorry, but that's why they pay me the big bucks -- to track down and flush out art like a bloodhound, wherever it may try to hide.