CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS THE FIRST EPIC MOVIE – Review

How hysterical do you find the name Professor Poopypants? Not very? Then you are likely a grown adult (and probably female). If you don’t find gags about farts, poop, tinkle, wedgies, and giant toilets endlessly hilarious – if you are not, in body or spirit, a 9-year-old boy, then Dreamworks new animated film CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS  – THE FIRST EPIC MOVIE is not for you. And that is precisely the point.

Few things command disrespect like the sight of a grown man wearing his tighty-whities, however the bald and barefoot Captain Underpants happens to be a superhero. As one character in CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS THE FIRST EPIC MOVIE notes: “Most superheroes look like they’re flying around in their underwear…. Well, this guy actually is flying around in his underwear!” The Captain is the comic-book invention of a pair of 9-year old troublemakers, George and Harold (voiced by Thomas Middleditch and Kevin Hart). When they’re not staging elaborate pranks at Jerome Horwitz Elementary, they’re drawing comics.  The boys use a ring from a cereal box to hypnotize their nemesis – the vengeful and humorless school principal Mr. Krupp (Ed Helms), who’s threatened to separate them into different classes. Krupp then sheds his outergarments, cries out “Tra-La-Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!” and enthusiastically battles crime clad in only a red cape and Y-fronts. While his creators occasionally try to snap him out of the trance, Captain Underpants battles the villainous Professor Poopypants by slingshotting underwear at him. Poopypants (voiced by Nick Kroll) wants to rid the world of laughter because the chip on his shoulder from his foul surname got heavier when it’s discovered his middle name is Diarrhea!

CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS THE FIRST EPIC MOVIE is fast-paced, subversive fun. I like that it doesn’t pander to the adults in the audience, or really anyone else besides its 9-year old boy target audience. It’s they who will find kindred spirits in George and Harold. The animation style here is simple, much like The Simpsons with more depth and shading, and it works. George even has a flat top like Bart. In one scene, the boys look into a future where they are no longer friends.  This scene is actually performed using sock puppets and it works nicely. CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS THE FIRST EPIC MOVIE may not raise the bar for kids movies, but it manages to pack a lot of anarchic fun and spectacle into its 85-minute running time and is recommended.

4 of 5 Stars