Blissfully pottymouthed fun

Captain Underpants

U cert, 89 min

★★★★★

Dir David Soren Starring Kevin Hart, Thomas Middleditch, Ed Helms, Nick Kroll, Jordan Peele

It’s hard to remember the last time an animation as blissfully silly as Captain Underpants was allowed to bound around on a $38million budget. The film has scads of charm and only token gestures at redeeming moral value. That’s why – rather in the Beano spirit – it’s such a delight.

It’s Dreamworks Animation’s lowest-budgeted feature to date, which is exactly how they’ve got away with it: for once, we don’t have to deal with longrange character arcs whereby everyone learns their inevitable lesson. There is no lesson, except that life is the ailment and laughter the cure. The baddies are characters who never see the funny side. As an adaptation of Dav Pilkey’s book series – which started in 1997 and is now runs to

12 – the film has been a long time coming. Pilkey took heavy persuasion to agree to it. Successfully achieving a U certificate while unleashing a stream of idiosyncratic laughs in every minute of screen time, Dreamworks have done him proud. It’s much harder to be this funny at U than 15, after all.

The heroes, George (Kevin Hart) and Harold (Thomas Middleditch) are inseparable fourth-graders and neighbours, who first bond in class over finding the word “Uranus” hilarious. Yep, it’s the oldest gag in the book, but it’s their pure glee that gets you on side. The script rallies to the defence of potty humour so valiantly it can’t help but win you over – the jokes are beyond broad to the point where they become a running commentary on themselves.

They’re also beautifully timed and structured. When the angry principal, Mr Krupp (Ed Helms), threatens to put them in different classes, they panic about sustaining a long-distance relationship. (It’s one of the most sweetly doting same-sex alliances in recent films.) Then they succeed in hypnotising Krupp, convincing him that he’s actually their comic-book creation – the superhero of the title, who flies about in only his pants and is affably stupid. Thus infantilised, Krupp becomes their puppet.

Because we need another villain, we get two: Professor Poopypants (Nick Kroll), and tattletale classmate Melvin (Jordan Peele), who becomes complicit in trying to wipe all laughter from the campus.

Antic madness ensues, of the kind that Pixar – with their immaculate control and somewhat snooty polish – could do with more of. This film plumps for Simpsons logic instead, where anything goes. Not bad going for a film that could have settled for distracting six-year-olds with methane emissions. In the best way, it’s a gas.