I didn’t go into The Simpsons Movie armed and ready to dismantle it with evidence of why it’s representative of the show’s decline and to pointlessly intellectualize breakdowns of individual bits and why they’re stupid — as much of a ridiculous Simpsons nerd as I am, I really hate the overevaluation of comedy on any level — but after seeing the movie this past Saturday, my go-to Simpsons nerd friend Steve and I spent literally about the next two hours airing our grievances about the film’s details with a passion and ugency greater than we’d ever shown towards charity, political awareness, or any other actually worthy cause. So when I proceed to rant about why this movie was a complete letdown in every regard, please note that I went into the movie wanting to enjoy it, wanting to just laugh at some stuff and not compare it to Seasons 5 and 6, and not to come out sounding like (/ actually being?) some self-righteous whiner who can’t ever be pleased by the one obsessive pleasantry which he takes too seriously. That being said, here is why The Simpsons Movie sucked (WARNING: Spoilers, de facto evidence of why I’m not a great human being contained within:)

1. Homer’s Physical Comedy
Homer getting hurt in the show was an infrequent, though a welcome and usually lightheated gag in the early seasons (Homer falling asleep with his head in the Quik-E-Mart door in Season 3) which eventually evolved into unrealistically violent, cartoonish physical humor (Homer getting his head stuck in a closing drawbridge, Season 9) and in the last five seasons, there practically hasn’t been an episode where Homer hasn’t been injured in some ridiculous manner that somehow made it from the Itchy & Scratchy shorts to the Simpsons’ real world (Homer being mauled by a raccoon and having his intestines showing through, Season whateverthehell). It’s bad enough when episodes need to lean on the Homer-injured crutch, but when it’s done constantly throughout an 80-minute movie in ways which are increasingly unrealistic and delivered with “Family Guy” faster-than-gravity kind of speed, it’s both disappointing and draining (or drainappointing, if you will).

2. Homer’s Complete Lack of Humanity
Staff writer George Meyer once joked that the “Frank Grimes” episode from Season 8 was when the show “lost its moral grounding.” While it’s true that Homer was always lazy, obese, and impossibly stupid in the early seasons, he was never beyond a believably tender moment with Marge (”Duffless”), Lisa (”Lisa’s Wedding”), or Maggie (”And Maggie Makes Three”), but in the past decade-plus, Homer’s moral decline has indeed robbed the franchise of its ability to fashion believable relationships between the characters that entertained beyond the show’s surface humor. The Homer character in the movie reaches new heights as an absolutely repulsive character who is not only ignorant of morals, but a consciously malicious human being and horrendous father exaggerated way beyond any point of being able to sympathize with him or even believe him enough to laugh at him.

3. The Greatest Cast of Characters In TV History Wasted
With the exception of a Flanders B-plot and individual scenes with Wiggum, Burns, and Quimby, the show’s supporting characters went almost literally unused in the film. Apu, Krusty, and Moe made little more than cameo appearances, and we got nothing from Sideshow Bob or Milhouse’s parents (why didn’t the whole movie center around Milhouse’s dad???), but instead, the movie introduced a really nondescript villain character (voiced by talented show mainstay Albert Brooks) and morphed McBain into “President Schwarzenegger” (heelarious!) in order to anchor a pretty half-baked plot, rather than base the movie’s primary conflict on one of the characters that the show’s been developing for eighteen years. This didn’t strike any of the producers as a complete waste?

4. Lazy, Lazy Jokes
Homer bouncing between a rock and a building with a sign that says “A Hard Place”; Bart putting a bra on his head to look like Mickey Mouse and saying “look at me, I’m a mascot for an evil corporation!”; Bart drawing crazy moustaches on the Simpsons’ Wanted poster and the police immediately arresting a family that looked exactly like the crazy drawing (I’ve said “Simpsons did it” to a bunch of movies but I’ve never said to The Simpsons, “the movie ‘Wrongfully Accused’ did it!”; “To Be Continued…. Right Now”; Homer seeing a jet pack, saying “Ah ha!” then grabbing a tiny tube of super glue instead; Bart getting drunk on whiskey; two cops randomly making out (though a dude next to me screamed “Man, I’ont need to see that!!” which was kind of funny). The movie was just loaded with first-draft, time-filling jokes that were so exhausting, I just can’t imagine how eighty seperate producers or whatever looked at the final cut and said “nice work, we are done.”

5. Otto Smoking a Bong
My friend and I both agreed that this minor detail was the single most embarrassing shot in the movie, and it sort of symbolically represents my general distaste for the entire effort put into the film. When the people of Springfield believe they’re about to be destroyed, they all begin panicking in their last moments, and the movie cuts to Otto smoking a bong, which of course garnered huge applause from the crowd. There’s no joke, no lines or anything, just Otto smoking a bong, because he smokes pot and they probably couldn’t show him smoking a bong in the tv show, so they just crammed it into the movie, sacrificing what little subtlety the show had ever hoped to establish. As my friend put it, they might as well have just shown Smithers having sex with a guy. Why was this shot in the movie?? If you really need Otto smoking a bong to be in your movie, at least make a joke out of it, or set it up somehow, or do anything creative with it other than literally just having a goddamn shot of Otto smoking a bong.

Again, I am not writing this list to say “Hey everyone! The Simpsons movie is bad, and I know why it’s bad, cause know the show really well and can point out really specific flaws!” I’m writing it more as a personal cathersis, trying to sort out in my head how the thing I love more than any other show or movie or anything I’ve ever followed in my life has somehow systematically devolved into something so weirdly unsatisfying on every level. Obviously the show has sucked for about eight years now (though the last two seasons have been far better than the four before it), but I, like a lot of Simpsons fans, was hoping that the movie would be one last stab at greatness for the show, one final chance to do something new with a franchise that has (understandably) exhausted just about every avenue over the course of its 75 years on the air, and the fact that it came up short is frustrating on a uniquely troubling level.

I would again point out how much I do not take pleasure in my non-enjoyment of the movie, but I feel like my overly dramatic language and epic self-righteousness (which I swore in the intro I wouldn’t dip to, damnit!) have already made that abundantly clear. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments, whether you agree or, even better, disagree, just so I don’t feel so alone in my newly shattered world.