Cartoon for kids dwells in toilet
It’s unlikely that anyone going to a movie called “Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie” is anticipating a strong story filled with practical reallife lessons.
And that’s perfectly OK. Sometimes parents just need an 89-minute cinematic babysitter. Sometimes children, especially at the end of the school year, deserve to wallow in a little potty humor. Not every familyfriendly movie needs to be filled with “Inside Out”-style Trojan horse psychotherapy.
And yet the DreamWorks Animation film still strains to meet its modest expectations. “Captain Underpants” is a very popular book series that doesn’t seamlessly translate to the big screen, and the filmmakers can’t solve this problem. The result is a cinematic wedgie: a little too dark, a little too nihilistic, a little too empty.
Beyond a sadistic principal and a couple of school staffers, “Captain Underpants” is a movie devoid of adults. The better “Peanuts” TV specials handled a similar scenario by tapping into the strong friendships and carefree feelings as kids approached a holiday. Never mind if that holiday turns out to be a disaster. Humanity and fellowship wins, even on the most melancholy days.
“Captain Underpants” presents a bleak and borderline dystopian world, where the friendship between comic book artists George and Harold (voiced by Kevin Hart and Thomas Middleditch) is the only light. Their primary joy is the short-term rush of pranking their teachers — including hypnotizing militaristic Principal Krupp into thinking he’s a superhero.
This is effective in Dav Pilkey’s “Captain Underpants” books, where the artwork suggests the slightly twisted but harmless fantasy world of a child’s mind. The comics are a small blast of subversiveness, empty calories to be consumed as the real world passes by outside a car window or bedroom door.
Viewed in a movie theater, “Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie” is a much more immersive experience. The central characters are part of the cartoon, not distanced from it. As the school descends into chaos with an evil professor and homicidal toilet robots, the cynicism is inescapable.
“Captain Underpants” seems to be working on a smaller budget than DreamWorks standouts such as “Megamind” and the “How to Train Your Dragon” movies. And yet the script from “The Muppets,” “Storks” and “Neighbors” writer Nicholas Stoller has its moments. A whoopie cushion symphony brings Brad Bird-era “The Simpsons” to mind. Reenactments are animated with sock puppets. As running jokes about the planet Uranus go, the ones written here are strong.
But in the end, it’s impossible to ignore the fact that this feature is devoid of even the simplest positive morals or takeaways. And it’s not quite funny or wry enough to forgive its weaknesses.
What’s left is a pair of XXXL briefs, a lot of toilet humor and the sense that Hollywood could do better.