CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS: THE FIRST EPIC MOVIE

Name: CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS: THE FIRST EPIC MOVIE
Item: CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS: THE FIRST EPIC MOVIE
Author: Ben Kayser

“Friendship Can Conquer Anything”

Family Content: +1 Moderately questionable elements. (Discernment required for young children.)

Entertainment Quality:

	None	Light	Moderate	Heavy
Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

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What You Need To Know:

CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS: THE FIRST EPIC MOVIE is a hilarious animated romp. George and Harold are best friends in the fourth grade. George writes a comic book about a comical superhero named Captain Underpants, which Harold illustrates. The boys pull many pranks. When their strict principal, Mr. Krupp, decides to separate them, George has a stroke of genius. He uses a spinning toy ring to hypnotize Mr. Krupp into believing he’s Captain Underpants and has super powers. When the fake Captain Underpants runs into a real villain, it’s up to George and Harold to help him save the day.

CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS has many hilarious moments. Despite some scatological humor and rebellious pranks, George and Harold learn their friendship can survive anything, including their fears of being separated. They also learn that Mr. Krupp is so mean because he’s actually lonely. So, they pull “a prank for good” where love makes Mr. Krupp a better person. To go along with these redemptive, moral themes, CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS includes some Christian allusions. The mild scatological humor and light cartoon violence warrant caution for very young children.

Content:

Worldview: Strong redemptive, moral worldview extolling the redemptive powers of friendship, creativity and love, which the movie implies can overcome almost anything, including fear, separation, loneliness, anger, sadness, malice, and comic villainy, plus a positive reference to God, a reference to the Bible, and characters sing Hallelujah using the tune to Handel’s Messiah, but story contains some antinomian elements that include a celebration of freedom in the sense of being able to not follow the rules though there is also some legalism that’s rebuked. Language: No foul language, but some scatological humor such as a new teacher (who turns out to be the villain) calls himself Professor P, but when the schoolchildren find out the “P” stands for “Poopypants” and laugh, the professor invents a giant machine to wipe out all laughter and a machine to enlarge or shrink objects, plus a toilet is used for one of the menacing invented machines, and boys laugh when they hear the name of the planet Uranus.

Violence:

Comic slapstick violence includes cartoon character gets hit by vehicles, character jumps out of a two-story window, villain shrinks school building and schoolchildren down to tiny size, villain hypnotizes people to lose their senses of humor and do his bidding, some lightly destructive pranks, character falls down climbing a fence and says, “Ow!,” character accidentally tears a large balloon ape off a roof and bounces along the street with it, a mime is accidentally punched, characters run into one another, and a mechanical toilet bowl invention goes wacko when sabotaged and flings rolls of toilet paper into the audience at a school assembly.

Sex:

None.

Nudity:

Upper male nudity when man is hypnotized to become Captain Underpants, a fictional superhero from a homemade comic book.

More Detail:

CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS: THE FIRST EPIC MOVIE is a hilarious animated romp about two boys, who hypnotize their strict principal into thinking he’s Captain Underpants, the silly, enthusiastic, dim-witted superhero from the homemade comic books they created. CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS is a funny family movie with positive themes extolling the redemptive powers of friendship, creativity and love, but there is some mild scatological humor. For instance, the comic villain’s name is Professor Poopypants.

The movie is narrated by George Beard, a fourth grader who writes a goofy homemade comic book about a comical superhero named Captain Underpants. George’s best friend, Harold Hutchins, illustrates the comic books with his crazy designs. Their strict, humorless principal, Mr. Krupp, however, confiscates all their comic books. So, George and Harold pull a lot of school pranks designed to irritate Mr. Krupp even more. One day, Mr. Krupp gets tired of all the pranks. So, he decides it’s time to separate George and Harold into different classrooms.

George and Harold are devastated by this news. They think it means the end of their friendship and all their fun together.
However, when the day arrives for Mr. Krupp to enforce the separation, George pulls out a spinning hypnotism ring he got from a Crackerjack box. He uses it on Mr. Krupp. To his and Harold’s surprise, it works!

In a fit of genius, George convinces Mr. Krupp that he’s Captain Underpants and has actual superpowers. The principal strips down to his underwear, and the boys give him a red cape. To their surprise, however, the pretend Captain Underpants jumps out the window and bounds across the street.

Desperately, George and Harold try to catch up with him before he hurts himself. Eventually they do, but they convince Mr. Krupp’s alter ego to pretend to be Mr. Krupp during the day. Finally, George and Harold get the easygoing, fun-living principal they’ve always wanted.

However, Captain Underpants is so dim-witted that he hires a new science teacher, the mysterious Professor P, who’s obviously up to no good.

When the students learn that the Professor’s last name is Poopypants, they start to laugh. Of course, because of his name, Professor Poopypants hates laughter. With help from the brainy teacher’s pet in George and Harold’s class, he invents a machine that can eliminate people’s sense of humor. He also invents a machine that can enlarge and shrink anything. Finally, he uses the hypnosis ring to force people to do his bidding.

Captain Underpants will need the help of George and Harold if they’re going to stop the Professor from carrying out his plan to stop the laughter and take over the world.

CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS has many hilarious moments. It’s also a perfectly structured comedy. For example, before everything is resolved at the end, the story just builds and builds on the comical chaos and destruction accidentally unleashed by the characters.
Despite some scatological humor and the rebellious pranks that George and Harold pull, the two boys learn that their friendship can survive anything, including their irrational fears of being separated. It’s also their friendship that helps them defeat the evil plans of Professor Poopypants. They also learn that Principal Krupp is so strict and mean because he’s actually just a lonely man with no friends. Eventually, George and Harold pull “a prank for good.” They use true love to cure Mr. Krupp’s loneliness, anger and sadness. It also makes him a better person.

To go along with these redemptive, morally uplifting themes and worldview, CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS includes some Christian allusions. At one point full of joy, George and Harold sing the Hallelujah chorus from Handel’s “Messiah,” with their own lyrics. The movie also contains a positive reference to God and a reference to a Bible verse.

Ultimately, it’s the redemptive themes that save the day for this movie, which probably will be the first of several CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS movies. The mild scatological references and light, funny cartoon violence warrant caution for very young children.