Top tighty-whitie screen moments
Ed Helms (aka Captain Underpants) ranks skivvy scenes
Tra-la-laaa! Ed Helms makes a bold briefs-uniformed entrance into the superhero world with Captain Underpants: The First
Epic Movie (in theaters Friday). Mr. Krupp, the school principal played by Helms, is turned into the ridiculous superbeing after he’s hypnotized by two troublesome students in the film adaptation of Dav Pilkey’s best-selling children’s books.
Krupp’s “bulbous body really highlights the simplicity and beauty of good ol’ tightywhities,” says Helms. “And he wears them with a very high level of confidence when he should clearly be embarrassed. That is truly heroic.”
He’s proud to join the “rich history” of undies in film and TV. And just why is stripping down onscreen so funny? “Because it’s inherently awkward and vulnerable.”
Here are Helms’ top five screen underpants moments, ranked:
1 Tom Cruise sock-slid into Risky Business
Cruise’s immortal scene that celebrates being home alone, set to Bob Seger’s Old Time Rock &
Roll, tops them all when it comes to memorable bottoms.
“This might be the most iconic underwear scene of all time,” says Helms of the breakout moment in 1983’s Risky Business. “Tom Cruise, Bob Seger and a socksliding entrance is nothing short of cinematic genius.”
2 Chris Hemsworth shows off his Vacation goods
Helms and Christina Applegate (as Rusty and Debbie Griswold) dealt with Hemsworth’s Stone Crandall showing off his package in the 2015 Vacation remake.
“I had a front row seat to this, and couldn’t stop laughing on set,” says Helms. “To this day, I laugh just as hard whenever I see it. Hemsworth is just so impossibly nonchalant through the whole scene. He’s brilliant.”
3 Mike Myers undermines the Austin Powers Fembots
Myers’ groovy British secret agent made his patriotic underwear a weapon battling the beautiful but deadly Fembots in 1997’s Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery.
“When the Fembots attack, Austin Powers fends them off with jaunty hip thrusts in his tighty-union-jackies,” says Helms. “Evidently, the Fembots are walloped by his mojo. It makes no sense, and that’s why we love it.”
4 Steve Martin plummets in Planes
Martin is already “profoundly hilarious,” says Helms. Then add the scene from 1987’s Planes, Trains &
Automobiles in which Martin’s Neal Page unwittingly dries his face in his obnoxious traveling partner’s (John Candy) “gigantic tightywhities.”
“Put them together and you have such an epic explosion of comedy that the very fabric of the space-time continuum is ripped apart and we are all left floating in joyful, humorous oblivion,” says Helms.
5 Bryan Cranston breaks Bad in briefs
Cranston’s high school teacher Walter White begins his long spiral into Breaking Bad drug lord infamy (2008) wearing saggy white underwear — prudently cooking his meth without ruining his slacks. “If you’re going to spiral into a vortex of despair and turpitude, do it in your skivvies for extra emphasis,” says Helms.