The imaginations fuelling the story are fourth-grade children George and Harold (voiced by Kevin Hart and Thomas Middleditch), who break up the monotony of their life at the unusually austere Jerome Horwitz Elementary School by drawing comics, playing pranks and generally trying to make each other laugh. Recent DreamWorks outings such as Trolls and The Boss Baby have got experimental with animation techniques, but sort of gone through the motions with their stories and scripts, but Captain Underpants, which is actually the lowest budgeted movie in the studio’s history, is creative all over, from the characters to the techniques. First and foremost, that comes with the style of animation – it’s the most idiosyncratic CG movie since Blue Sky’s Peanuts movie from a couple of years back, taking inspiration from Pilkey’s illustrations rather than redesigning the characters. But its flights of fancy also take in conventional ‘2D’ animation, a flipbook for when things get ‘too violent and expensive’, and a wildly hilarious sock puppet sequence that represents George and Harold’s worst nightmare. The script comes from Nicholas Stoller, who wrote and co-directed last year’s similarly berserk animation Storks, and previously co-wrote the last two Muppet movies. We like a lot of his fare for older audiences, which includes Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Him To The Greek, but he’s four for four on family-friendly comedies, and we hope he’ll continue to find time for both. What’s so endearing about the film is that it knows how juvenile it is, and even makes a plot in which the villain doesn’t understand what’s so funny (a character flaw shared with The Muppets‘ Tex Richman) but a sense of humour, however silly, is always enough to save the day. Even if you have a low tolerance for ‘childish’ jokes, we urge you to grit your teeth until the gloriously imaginative third act, which is worth the price of admission alone. Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie is in UK cinemas from July 28th.
