Voiced with kitschy conviction by Nick Kroll, he’s a real spark plug of a character, Teutonically sure of himself yet secretly vulnerable, with an amusing way of over-explaining whatever’s in his head (“Hi, class! I’m your cool new teacher, not some sorry guy with a secret evil agenda”). The movie kicks in when Professor Poopypants shows up to take a job as the school’s new science teacher. This ain’t Pixar or the subversively inspired “Sausage Party.” It’s an unabashedly goofy PG lark: arrestedness delivered with kid gloves. When a 3D Hypno Ring out of a cereal box turns Principal Krupp into whoever they want him to be, they figure why not bring their pet superhero to life? More a mascot of silliness than an actual savior, Captain Underpants is as benign as Krupp is angry: an ultra-square ricocheting doofus who collides with a car and says, “Why, thank you, vehicle person!” He’s sort of a one-joke affair, and that’s true of the movie as well. The two are clever cutups who’ve created many volumes of their own hand-drawn comic book, Captain Underpants. George and Harold are just trying to do something - anything - to relieve the tedium. Sure, they specialize in dreaming up school pranks, but only because the vicious Principal Krupp (voiced by Ed Helms), with his oversize gnashing teeth and lid-flipping spidery toupee, runs the place like a glum penitentiary (explaining his office bunker, he says, “It was a choice between the magnetic door and closing down the school music and arts programs”). The main characters are a couple of square-headed fourth graders with sidelong grins, George (voiced by Kevin Hart) and Harold (Thomas Middleditch), who have been best friends ever since they bonded, in first grade, over the insane funniness of the word “Uranus.” If that makes it sound like we’re watching “Beavis and Butt-Head: The Formative Years” (if only!), George and Harold are as quick-witted and wholesome as they are likely to laugh at a good bodily-function joke. Are you laughing yet? Poopypants teams up with Melvin (Jordan Peele), a student nerd who’s a humor-impaired brown-noser, but the villain here is really anyone who won’t give in and crack up at what the movie, in one of its periodic meta japes, refers to as “the lowest form of comedy.” Directed by David Soren, from a script by Nicholas Stoller (the co-director of “Storks”), “Captain Underpants” is an animated bauble that wears its heart on its whoopee cushion, though if you don’t happen to be 5 years old, it may strike you as more cheeky (no pun intended) than hilarious. (My own daughters are 6 and 4 I’m already gearing up for repeat viewings.) His agenda isn’t world domination it’s to eliminate any sense of humor in children, all because he has a neurotic complex about the fact that his real name - wait for it - is Professor Poopypants. It also has a villain named Professor P - a sawed-off Einstein in sunglasses, a Chermin accent, and cottony puffs of hair. The movie could be to grade-school scatology what “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” was to cuisine. In addition to underwear jokes, “Captain Underpants” features peepee jokes, fart jokes, and giant monster-toilet jokes. The title character of “Captain Underpants” is a scolding meanie of a grade-school principal who is hypnotized into getting in touch with his inner idiot: a blobby mock superhero who announces himself with a fanfare of “Tra-la- laaa!” He then scampers around in stretched-out tighty-whities and speckled cape, performing good deeds of staggering imbecility.
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