Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie ★★★★★

Considering that you can animate absolutely anything these days, it's surprising how uninventive a lot of animations are. Unconstrained by the laws of physical space, even free of the laborious hand-drawn flick-book process of early cartoons, animations can take the leftest of left-field turns in every frame. The limits of the film are the limits of the imagination – but it looks like there are a lot of limited imaginations out there.

This isn't to set up Captain Underpants as a Dadaist head-trip that subverts the conventions of narrative and character. It's still a superhero story with a villain called Professor Poopypants. But it has the same kind of restless humour that The Lego Movie had, and there's something pleasing about how it uses cutting edge technology for the purpose of telling very silly jokes.



Based on the series of novels by Dav Pilkey, Captain Underpants tells the story of George (Kevin Hart) and Harold (Thomas Middleditch): two schoolboys who spend their free time making comic books in George's treehouse, and spend their schooldays engineering pranks for the benefit of their classmates. Their nemesis in each case is Principal Krupp (Ed Helms), a cantankerous head teacher with a vendetta against the two free-spirits.

When George and Harold hijack a robotic toilet to throw an impromptu disco (yup), Krupp threatens to disrupt their friendship by assigning them to different classes, but an encounter with a novelty hypnosis ring (uh-huh) puts him under their spell. Taking the opportunity to convince Krupp that he's actually the hero of their comic book 'Captain Underpants', the two class clowns find themselves with the opportunity for havoc – and, when the world is threatened by actual villain Professor Pee-Pee Diarrheastein Poopypants, Esq., a hero to save the day.

The visuals are a satisfying blend of Popeye, Peanuts, and The Beano, and George and Harold make for suave likeable hosts (there's a lot of fourth-wall breaking and gentle meta-comedy). There is a deep irreverence throughout for everything but irreverent humour itself. It's not a timeless Pixar-esque classic – you won't go to see this without a child in tow like you will with The Incredibles 2 – but it's not trying to be. It's just fun.