Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie

Captain Underpants is a movie that understands its audience - Mostly 10-year-old boys.  More importantly, it understands how to reach the inner 10-year-old of most adults who will be watching it with their kids.  I can imagine a lot of fathers and sons having a blast with this movie.  It's not a major animated film, and never pretends to be.  It's silly, breezy, and it features a villain named Professor Pee-Pee Diarrheastein Poopypants, Esq.  If that doesn't warrant a recommendation, I don't know what does.

Even though I have never read any of them, I am aware of the immensely popular series of children's books written by Dav Pilkey where Captain Underpants got his start.  I also am familiar with the fact that the books have been banned from some schools, which makes me wonder what some adults are thinking.  The movie is harmless, and I assume the books are in a similar good nature.  Yes, there is some juvenile humor, but the worst thing we get is a giant robot toilet running rampage through a city during the climax.  The movie's really all about the joys of boyhood playground humor, and a parody of superhero tropes.  Captain Underpants himself is a funny creation.  He kind of looks like an egg crossed with a human baby, and even though he possesses no actual superpowers, he still fights crime and usually succeeds through sheer dumb luck.  Like most superheroes, the Captain has a secret identity.  In this case, it's the strict, kid-hating school Principal Mr. Krupp (voice by Ed Helms).  Unlike most superheroes, Mr. Krupp has no idea of his heroic alter ego, because he only becomes Captain Underpants when he's under hypnosis.

How did this happen?  That would be thanks to George (Kevin Hart) and Harold (Thomas Middleditch), two young boys who attend Mr. Krupp's elementary school, and survive day by day by cracking each other up, and drawing comics about the courageous and dim-witted Captain Underpants in George's tree house.  They also enjoy planing elaborate pranks to play on Krupp and their teachers.  When the two boys are finally caught in the act, Krupp threatens them with the ultimate punishment that any child could face - Being forced to attend separate classes, so that the two friends won't be able to see each other during the school day and cause trouble.  Never mind that they live immediately next door to each other, and can see each other outside of school.  To George and Harold, being in separate classes is akin to being separated by the vast reaches of the universe.  Out of desperation, George tries his luck with a hypnotizing ring that he found in a cereal box, and amazingly, it manages to put Mr. Krupp in a trance.  With their Principal under their power, all they have to do is snap their fingers, and suddenly he thinks that he is Captain Underpants, and begins roaming around the city wearing nothing but his underwear and a cape, looking for crime.

It just so happens that the city could use a hero right about now, as it turns out that the school's new Science teacher is none other than Professor Poopypants (Nick Kroll), a German-accented villain who has invented a device that can destroy all laughter and humor, as people have always laughed at his name all his life.  With the aid of the school nerd Melvin (Jordan Peele), the Professor carries out his diabolical experiment on the school kids, and ultimately builds a giant robotic toilet to serve as his mode of transportation and destruction.  I'm looking back over this synopsis I have written, and I can understand if you would be quick to brush it off as being dumb and juvenile, and it certainly is.  But it's also smart in a way.  The screenplay by Nicholas Stoller (Storks) juggles a fine line between toilet humor and genuinely funny superhero satire.  Besides, the movie is never crude or disgusting.  It has an innocence to it, and genuinely sounds like the kind of story a kid of a certain age would write in order to crack their friends up.  There are funny names, words puns, and visual gags plenty, some including actual sock puppets and even a flip book animated sequence, which my friend who accompanied me to the screening and is familiar with the books informs me is a regular thing in the stories.

Captain Underpants is the kind of movie where you often find yourself laughing at the absurdity of it, and then laughing even more at the fact that you're laughing in the first place.  This is a silly movie made by smart people.  The game cast helps a lot, too.  Ed Helms is often hilarious in his larger than life portrayal of Captain Underpants, as well as his short-tempered true identity, Mr. Krupp, who enjoys nothing more than to torture his students by making them come in to school on Saturdays.  But Kroll is the real scene-stealer here.  His Professor Poopypants gets laughs just from his line delivery alone.  The fact that most of the things he says is actually funny just adds to the hilarity.  It's the kind of comical villain performance we seldom get, where the actor just throws all subtlety out the window, and just lets us have as much fun as he clearly was playing the character.

Is the movie slight?  Probably.  Would it have probably worked better as a TV movie rather than a theatrical release?  Maybe.  But I can't deny that I had a great time with this one.  It may be juvenile, but it's not dirty, and it never revels in bad taste.  You get the feeling that this is an animated movie a kid like George or Harold would make if they had the budget, the means, and the smarts to also reach an adult audience, and make them laugh as much as the kids.

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