The Simpsons short film, The Longest Daycare, was shown prior to screenings of Ice Age: Continental Drift, on July 13, 2012, in the United States. But with so many positive reviews, many are saying the 4m30 short is better than the glacial feature that helped launch it.

Claudia Puig of USA Today is convinced that "the brief tale is far more clever and whimsical than any sequence in Ice Age," while Sun Herald critic Leigh Paatsch said the short film "displays all the wit and creativity missing from Continental Drift." Ouch. San Francisco Chronicle writer Amy Biancolli, on a similar vein, wrote that the mini-Simpsons film is "only a few minutes long, but those few minutes boast more imagination, pathos and suspense than the entire film that follows." Joe Williams of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch wrote that while the short takes place in a daycare, it features more "artistic maturity" than Continental Drift.

Maggie Simpson gets her overdue starring role in director David Silverman's "The Longest Daycare," which is actually one of five films up for an Oscar in the animated short films category. Given the success of the film's parent series, The Simpsons, it's difficult to see any other film taking the gong for a short.