Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie
Directed by: David Soren
Written by: Nicholas Stoller - Based on the novels by Dav Pilkey
Voices by: Kevin Hart, Thomas Middleditch, Ed Helms, Nick Kroll, Jordan Peele, Kristen Schall
Animation/Action/Comedy - 89 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 1 Jun 2017
Written by: Nicholas Stoller - Based on the novels by Dav Pilkey
Voices by: Kevin Hart, Thomas Middleditch, Ed Helms, Nick Kroll, Jordan Peele, Kristen Schall
Animation/Action/Comedy - 89 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 1 Jun 2017
Four year-olds like any movie they see and adore toilet humor. My kid won’t pick a favorite movie because he says he likes them all. He still talks about the baby farting in The Boss Baby; it’s a scene he will find funny the rest of his life. Then how is it possible, where every other joke is about farts or bowel movements, and the villain’s name is Professor Poopypants, that my kid leaned over to me during Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie and whispered, “Dada, I don’t like this movie. Let’s go home.” I can’t blame him for a short attention span this time; he’s right, even the four year-old recognizes Captain Underpants is terrible.
Dav Pilkey’s Captain Underpants series has 12 books in the franchise and sold an astronomical 70 million units. The characters were allegedly a hot commodity in Hollywood for a long time; therefore, what has DreamWorks done to it? I cannot believe the story comes off this atrocious on the page. David Soren, who directed Turbo (2013), about the garden snail who wants to race in the Indy 500, helms this film adaptation and mercifully got it through in 2D in a 3D-obsessed industry. The stale CG graphics are average at best most likely because DreamWorks farmed out the work to Montreal-based Mikros Image, a studio best known for The Little Prince (2016).
Dav Pilkey’s Captain Underpants series has 12 books in the franchise and sold an astronomical 70 million units. The characters were allegedly a hot commodity in Hollywood for a long time; therefore, what has DreamWorks done to it? I cannot believe the story comes off this atrocious on the page. David Soren, who directed Turbo (2013), about the garden snail who wants to race in the Indy 500, helms this film adaptation and mercifully got it through in 2D in a 3D-obsessed industry. The stale CG graphics are average at best most likely because DreamWorks farmed out the work to Montreal-based Mikros Image, a studio best known for The Little Prince (2016).
I have never read a Captain Underpants book and this is my first exposure to the material. Is it all poop jokes like this? The central plot is endearing enough, two elementary school best friends spend all their time together, pull pranks, create comic books together, and battle the menacing Principal Krupp for making school a terrible place to be. This scenario is no stranger to anyone familiar with Saturday morning cartoons and even Saved by the Bell. It’s the kids versus the adults. Echoing Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang, parents don’t exist in this world.
George Beard (Kevin Hart, The Secret Life of Pets) and Harold Hutchins (Thomas Middleditch, The Wolf of Wall Street) fight The Man when he needs fighting. Professor Krupp (Ed Helms, Vacation) ensures his school’s morale level hovers near the floor evidenced by sullen kids shuffling along and some even locking themselves inside their own lockers. Krupp never gets the goods on the prankster duo though; George and Harold are too skilled to get caught. After a particularly tortuous Saturday locked inside school at the mandatory Invention Convention, the pair finally get their up and cummance. Caught out by school tattle tell, Melvin Sneedly (Jordan Peele, Storks), Krupp finally has a chance to do what he probably could have done all along as principal, put George and Harold into separate classes.
Separate classes means something different to George and Harold. To the rest of us, it would mean waiting to see your buddy until the end of the day; to these boys, it is the beginning of them becoming perfect strangers. They won’t know each other anymore. To stop Krupp and his wonderful framed plaque displayed on his desk for all to see, “Hope Dies Here,” George hypnotizes Krupp into becoming Captain Underpants, their comic book superhero. Captain Underpants actually has no powers so most of the attempted laughs are at Krupp’s pratfalls and physical comedy as he attempts to fight non-existent crime.
There is an evil villain though, Professor Poopypants (Nick Kroll, Knight of Cups), whose evil plan is to rid the world of children’s laughter so they can no longer poke fun at his name. In the history of villains meant to scare kids, this guy is right up there with evil cartoon plaque meant to teach kids to brush their teeth better. Professor Poopypants operates an enormous toilet powered by leftover cafeteria food, and it all just gets worse from there. I assumed my kid would latch on to a name like Professor Poopypants and yell it out loud for all it was worth; apparently it is worth a shrug and a knowing forehead wrinkle that even he believes this is a character not meant for film.
Kids will relate to George and Harold; just about everybody has a best friend from elementary school who was the yin to your yang. Yet who does DreamWorks and David Soren believe will identify with and roll around on the floor laughing at the trials and suffering of Professor Poopypants? There are a few catchy one-liners sprinkled in for the adults to chuckle at, but perhaps Captain Underpants is meant to be black ink outlines in a book. It’s not as if the evil kite-eating tree from Peanuts could carry its own film; then why try with Professor Poopypants?
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