Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie

It feels like forever ago when I was a child in elementary school reading the Captain Underpants books. I loved their vulgar potty humor and semi-adult themes, they were all but everything a child loved to laugh at and joke about. It was around that time that my friends and I all speculated and wondered about a Captain Underpants movie. We all wondered who would play the titular role, George, Harold, and the other characters involved. However, it never came to fruition.

Ten years later, however, I'm in college, working a part-time job, and a video appears on my YouTube homepage: "Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie OFFICIAL TRAILER." I had this harsh realization like you see in some comedy movie featuring a dolly zoom and sound effect. Here we are now, finally getting that god damned Captain Underpants movie...and I'm about ten years too old to enjoy it.

Honestly, the first thought I had in my head was a resounding, "FINALLY." But then it dawned on me...this could be so bad. It was made by Dreamworks, who hasn't been doing so hot as of late. It featured Kevin Hart, who, while very, very funny, has a knack of not giving a shit in some of his movies. And finally, it's coming out in an era that's so saturated by half-assed kids movies, that it would take a lot for it to stand out. I just had one thing to say...if it was shit, I'd announce my childhood as dead. I went to see it anyway.

It's really hard to circle down the plot of Captain Underpants to a short synopsis, but here goes. It's a story about George Beard and Harold Hutchins, two over-imaginative kids who like to draw comic books. However, they're set under the tyrannical rule of Mr. Krupp, their principal. A bunch of shenanigans occur and they end up hypnotizing Mr. Krupp to keep him from destroying their friendship. They end up turning Krupp into Captain Underpants, and he begins to, "fight crime," through all sorts of potty based humor.

Now, taking all that into consideration, you can see where I'm coming from with the distinct fear that this could be bad. But, thankfully, I was surprised to see that Captain Underpants managed to hit the mark with resounding accuracy. 

It has a wonderful acceptance of its source material, for one, bringing back call backs that even I forgot until I saw them again in the movie, giving me an, "Oh yeah!" type moment. The humor is dirty, yet clean at the same time...I honestly heard more adults laughing in the audience than children. Animation is well-done, bringing a 3D aspect to the original illustrations done by author Dav Pilkey. It's honestly just the perfect Captain Underpants movie that I never knew I wanted.

So here I am, 21 years old, enjoying a Captain Underpants movie ten years after I bought the last book I had from that series. Who knew? But with a faithful adaptation such as this, we can't really complain about it, and that's what I'm not gonna be doing. I'm gonna give Captain Underpants a 7.6/10. I really want to see a sequel out of this, oddly enough, and hopefully we'll get one and continue the legacy of our favorite hero in an elastic wasteband.

Am I ashamed? Fuck no. Tra-la-laaa motherfuckers.