Here’s your morning news brief.
It’s faster than a speeding waistband – it’s Captain Underpants! Beginning as a worldwide bestselling children’s book series by Dav Pilkey, this giant buffoon couldn’t be a more unlikely hero. He couldn’t be less appealing as a character to an adult audience. It’s strictly for kids, isn’t it?
Or is it?
Boasting an A-list cast of comedy superstars headed by Kevin Hart and Ed Helms, DreamWorks Animation brings audiences the long-awaited global movie event, Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie (which implies that they’re planning on making a bunch of these).
Every superhero has an origin story, and this first movie covers that all important territory. He has his genesis as a principal of a local elementary school named Mr. Krupp. Krupp is crafty, angry, vindictive and has an unending appetite for control and power. Unable to climb above his station, he turns his anger downwards on the defenseless. His alterego, the ridiculously enthusiastic, incredibly dim-witted Captain Underpants, is everything Krupp is not. Sooner or later the two identities have to resolve back into a single whole person, but in the meantime, the two boys who hypnotize him into being Captain Underpants in the first place are having the times of their lives.
It’s like a Weird Al song – it’s so irrepressibly silly that you can’t help liking it. Dreamworks Animation saw the potential, and despite it making no sense whatsoever to make a Captain Underpants movie from a dramatic standpoint, going full slapstick seems to be a thing that works. It’s only fitting and proper that Weird Al Yankovic should create the theme song for this strange amalgam of grade school comedy and – well, more grade school comedy.
Captain Underpants features the voices of Ed Helms, Kevin Hart, Nick Kroll, Thomas Middleditch, Jordan Peele and Kristen Schaal, and makes its debut June 2, 2017.
It will be an actual full length motion picture. Not just a shorts subject.
Tra-la-LAAAAA!!
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