Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie

Captain Underpants is Dreamworks's latest animated feature based on the book series by Dav Pilkey. It's about two elementary school boys named George Beard and Harold Hutchins who are the school's pranksters. They make comics in their treehouse called Captain Underpants and have to deal with an incredibly unpleasant principal named Mr. Krupp. However, one day when they got into major trouble, George uses a hypnotizing ring to turn Mr. Krupp into Captain Underpants.

Dreamworks hasn't necessarily been doing very well at the box office or with critics for the last few years. When I went to this movie, I was optimistic, mainly because I knew the source material very well since I read the Captain Underpants books. It turns out that I was right for going in with an optimistic attitude. This is Dreamworks's best stand-alone in a good while. They picked out a book/book franchise that is somewhat well-known instead of something completely out of nowhere like Smekday or The Boss Baby, which really helps bring in attention to said movie. The movie knows its source material really well with the ins and outs. It knows what it is and it even pokes fun at some of the inner workings of the movie. I'm aware that this is only an adaptation and there's a limit to how far you can go and from what we got, they did a decent job at it. The animation looks like a 3D version of something that you would see in the books, and just that is enough for me to like the style that the movie was going for.

Despite the fact that I think that this is one of Dreamworks's best in a while, it does have some flaws here and there. First off, the pacing makes the movie feel like it's going too fast at times. The movie only seems to have times where you can sink in the moment occasionally, but not very often. Since the movie does carry the spirit of the books, it also carries the humor, which I personally didn't laugh at many of the jokes, which may turn people off from watching the movie. A lot of the humor is derived from toilet humor and as well as it works for this movie in particular, it may drive audiences away. I'm also not a huge fan of the voice casting in this, mostly with the children. You would normally expect kids to sound like kids, but in this movie, the kids sound more like adults and it's really bothersome. Normally if adults are doing child voices, they would pitch up their voices, but here, Kevin Hart, Thomas Middleton and Jordan Peele use their regular voices and it's just distracting.

While this movie might not be for everyone, it can be classified as Dreamworks's best movie in a while that's not a sequel. If you're a huge fan of the books, I recommend checking out this movie!

8/10