Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie first premiered at the Regency Village Theatre, in Los Angeles, California, in the United States, on May 21, 2017, and was first released theatrically in theatres, in the United States, on June 2, 2017, in both the 2-D and the 3-D formats. The film received generally positive reviews, with critics praising the animation, humor, faithfulness, and references to its source material, and voice acting, particularly from Helms. It grossed $125 million worldwide against a budget for $38 million, the lowest budget for a film from DreamWorks Animation, until 2021, with Spirit Untamed, which had a budget for $30 million.[6]
In Piqua, Ohio, best friends and next-door neighbors George Beard and Harold Hutchins create comic books, their latest creation being a superhero named Captain Underpants. They are fourth-graders at Jerome Horwitz Elementary School, where their excessive pranks to cheer up their fellow students put them at odds with their cruel principal Benjamin Krupp. One day, they are tamper with their classmate Melvin Sneedly's invention, the Turbo Toilet 2000, during a Saturday mandatory Invention Convention to liven up the other kids' weekend. Mr. Krupp uses one of Melvin's other inventions to record the boys enacting the prank, and prepares to put George and Harold in separate classes in hopes of ending their friendship.
George hypnotizes Mr. Krupp using a 3-D Hypno-Ring from a cereal box before Mr. Krupp can sign the papers to separate George and Harold. They command Mr. Krupp to become Captain Underpants, leading him to cause trouble around town. After taking him to their treehouse, the boys discover that they can turn Captain Underpants back into Mr. Krupp by splashing water on him and back into Captain Underpants by snapping their fingers. To keep Mr. Krupp from separating them, they convince Captain Underpants that Mr. Krupp is his secret identity. His change in personality attracts the attention of the school's shy lunch lady Edith.
Meanwhile, Professor Pee-Pee Diarrheastein Poopypants, Esquire is hired as the school's new science teacher, though George and Harold are suspicious of his violent behavior. Poopypants, who invented a Nobel Prize-winning sizerator capable of shrinking and enlarging things, is sick of never being taken seriously due to his name, and seeks to eliminate all laughter. With Captain Underpants as principal, the school becomes a livelier place, but a rainstorm turns Captain Underpants back into Mr. Krupp, who officially places George and Harold in separate classes.
Poopypants and Melvin grow the Turbo Toilet 2000, power it with Edith's toxic leftovers, and use it to attack the school. Poopypants uses Melvin's brain, which lacks the part that causes laughter, to power a ray that turns the students into dull, humorless zombies. Captain Underpants tries to stop them but, having no superpowers, is thrown into the toxic waste. George and Harold are captured, but the power of a joke that made them friends in kindergarten overloads the Turbo Toilet 2000, returning the kids to normal and trapping Melvin in giant toilet paper. The toxic leftovers give Captain Underpants real superpowers and, with George and Harold's help, he defeats and shrinks Poopypants, who escapes on a bee.
Unable to control Captain Underpants forever, George and Harold destroy the Hypno-Ring to permanently change him back into Mr. Krupp, but swear to remain friends. However, after realizing that Mr. Krupp would be nicer if he had friends, they set him and Edith up on a date, causing Krupp to have a change of heart and return the comics he confiscated from George and Harold. However, the toxic waste from the Turbo Toilet 2000 transforms the toilets at a scrapyard into an army of Talking Toilets, which attack the restaurant where Mr. Krupp and Edith are dining. After unwittingly snapping his fingers, Mr. Krupp is once again transformed into Captain Underpants, to Edith's surprise and admiration, and he flies away with George and Harold to face their next adventure together.
Kevin Hart as George Beard, a fourth-grade student who is best friends with Harold. Together, they make comic books, with George writing stories and Harold illustrating them. He is typically calmer in tough situations.
Ed Helms as Mister Benjamin Krupp / Captain Underpants, the grumpy and mean principal of Jerome Horwitz Elementary School. George and Harold hypnotize him into becoming Captain Underpants, a superhero they created, to stop him from putting them in separate classes.[8]
Nick Kroll as Professor Pee-Pee Diarrheastein Poopypants Esquire, a ruthless and humorless German-accented mad scientist and the film's antagonist. He plots to take over the world to eliminate all laughter after years of being constantly disparaged for his name.[8]
Thomas Middleditch as Harold Hutchins, a fourth-grade student who is best friends with George. He illustrates books while George writes stories. He is usually cautious and worrisome in tough situations. Harold is friendly and has a fondness for dolphins.[8][9]
Jordan Peele as Melvin Sneedly, George and Harold's nerdy enemy. He is a child prodigy who becomes Professor Poopypants' sidekick due to lacking a sense of humor.[8]
Kristen Schaal as Edith, the shy school lunch lady and the love interest of Mr. Krupp. She is only created for the film, and is partially based on Mrs. Edith Anthrope from the book series, who is featured as a separate character.[9]
Production
DreamWorks Pictures and DreamWorks Animation first interested the film rights to the Captain Underpants series dates back to when the first installment was published in 1997, but creator Dav Pilkey did not want to sell them. Early pitches for an adaptation included video games, animated and live-action films, an animated series, and a live-action series. To persuade him, DreamWorks Pictures and DreamWorks Animation gave Pilkey a tour around the studio with everyone wearing underpants over their trousers, which made him laugh.[10] In October 2011, his representatives indicated Pilkey was ready, and DreamWorks Animation won the rights in an auction.[11] In October 2013, Rob Letterman was announced as director and Nicholas Stoller as scriptwriter.[12] The two had previously worked together on the film Gulliver's Travels. In January 2014, the cast was announced; Ed Helms as Captain Underpants / Mr. Krupp, Kevin Hart as George Beard, Thomas Middleditch as Harold Hutchins, Nick Kroll as the "insidious villain" Professor Poopypants, and Jordan Peele as George and Harold's "nerdy nemesis" Melvin Sneedly.[8]
In 2014, DreamWorks Animation announced a January 2017 release date.[14] Following DreamWorks Animation's reorganization in early 2015, the studio announced that the film would be produced outside of the studio's pipeline at a significantly lower cost.[15] It was instead animated at Mikros Image in Montreal, Canada, and at Technicolor Animation Productions in France, and therefore looks identical to Pilkey's original drawing style, as well as differently than many of the DreamWorks Pictures and DreamWorks Animation films.[16] A month later, Letterman left the project but came back as an executive producer, and David Soren, the director of Turbo, entered talks to direct the film.[17]
During production, Pilkey got to work closely with Soren. He was relieved that Soren was directing since he was a fan of Turbo. In an interview with Los Angeles Times, Pilkey said: "Once I met David, it was like a huge load fell off my back; I was like, 'I don't even have to think about this anymore. Just send me a couple of tickets to the premiere.'"[10] Commenting back, Soren said, "In a way, the controversy over the books ended up being liberating for the film. Normally on an animated movie, you're trying to appeal to every possible demographic, and often that results in your content being watered down a little bit. Obviously, we hope we get as wide of an audience as possible. But it's likely that if people have issues with the books they may have issues with the movie too, and we didn't feel like we needed to waste a lot of time trying to rope them in. It allowed us to make the purest version of the movie."[10] Soren also said that he took inspiration from John Hughes films. In an interview with MovieFreak, he mentioned,
"We actually looked at a lot of John Hughes movies for inspiration, like Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Weird Science. John Hughes had this great knack for making comedies like this. Both of those movies have great friendships at the center of them. He seemed to be able to tap into the voice of a generation. They're very funny, all of his movies, but they are also poignant and they actually have meaningful things to say, which I think is why they have stood the test of time. So there's timelessness to his work that we were attempting to go for with this."[18]
"Weird Al" Yankovic wrote and performed the theme song for the film (which is possibly a reference to the first book, where in Mr. Krupp mentions one of George and Harold's pranks was rigging the school intercoms to "play "Weird Al" Yankovic songs full blast for 6 hours straight"), which was featured in a lyric video. Andy Grammer wrote another original song for the film, titled "A Friend Like You".[19] The film also features music from Adam Lambert, Cold War Kids member Nathan Willett, and Lil Yachty.[19] An 11-track soundtrack album was released digitally on June 2, 2017, by Virgin Records and Deep Well Records.[20]
The music score was scored by Theodore Shapiro.[19] A soundtrack for the score of the film was released on June 9. It features 24 pieces of music, and an exclusive digital booklet on iTunes. Three of the scores are also available on the soundtrack (those being "Comic Book Opening", "Saving the Day", and "The Prank for Good").
Release
Theatrical
Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie was previously scheduled to be released on March 10, 2017,[17] but in September 2015, The Boss Baby took over its date.[21] The film was then moved to June 2, 2017.[22][23] Other territories such as Europe and Asia received the film between July and October 2017. The film first premiered at the Regency Village Theatre, in Los Angeles, California, in the United States, on May 21, 2017.[24] The film was chosen alongside with the 2017 Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation film, titled The Emoji Movie, to inaugurate the removal of Saudi Arabia's cinema ban through a double feature screening on January 13, 2018, organized by Cinema 70; they were the first two movies to be given an official public screening in the country in 35 years.[25]
Home media
Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie was first released digitally, on digital download, in the United States, on August 29, 2017, and was first released digitally, on Ultra HD Blu-ray, Blu-ray, and DVD by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, in the United States, on September 12, 2017.[26] From January 10, 2018, to July 10, 2019, the film was available on Netflix, the film returned to the streaming platform after 4 years on July 10, 2023.
Reception
Box office
Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie grossed $73.9 million in the United States and Canada and $51.6 million in other territories, for a worldwide gross of $125.5 million, against a production budget of $38 million.[5]
In North America, the film was released alongside Wonder Woman, and was projected to gross around $20 million from 3,434 theaters in its opening weekend.[27] It made $8 million on its first day and $23.9 million in its opening weekend, finishing second at the box office, behind Wonder Woman ($103.3 million).[28][29] The film grossed $12.2 million in its second weekend, $7.2 million in its third and $4.3 million in its fourth.[30]
Critical response
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 87% based on 138 reviews and an average rating of 7/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "With a tidy plot, clean animation, and humor that fits its source material snugly, Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie is entertainment that won't drive a wedge between family members."[31] On Metacritic, the film has a score of 70 out of 100 based on 25 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[32] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.[28]
Matt Zoller Seitz of RogerEbert.com gave the film three-and-a-half out of four stars. Although Seitz pointed out that the film is hampered by "a rushed, jumbled quality" and has "tiresome" features that he says are common to DreamWorks, such as "frenetic action scenes ... and the use of workhorse pop songs", he emphasized that "[t]hey've approached this compendium of elemental slapstick and unabashed childishness with the reverence that the Coen brothers brought to No Country for Old Men." He further added that the inclusion of the flipbook interludes are the film's best parts, especially in having the pages accidentally be torn similar to the real books, stating that "[i]t's not often that a movie puts a spotlight on a mundane ritual in your own life that you never realized was profound and says, 'You probably forgot about this, but I want you to remember it and savor it because it meant something.'"[33]
On December 12, 2017, Netflix and DreamWorks Animation Television announced that there would be an animated series to spin off the film, entitled The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants.[48][49] It premiered on the streaming service on July 13, 2018,[50] and is executive-produced by Peter Hastings.
On December 9, 2020, DreamWorks Animation announced that a feature film adaptation of Dog Man (another one of George and Harold's comic creations) is currently in the works by director Peter Hastings, the showrunner for The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants.[51]
The movie is scheduled for release on January 31, 2025.[52][53]
^"IFMCA Award Nominations 2017". International Film Music Critics Association. February 8, 2018. Archived from the original on February 9, 2018. Retrieved February 22, 2018.
^"IFMCA Award Winners 2017". International Film Music Critics Association. February 22, 2018. Archived from the original on February 27, 2018. Retrieved February 23, 2018.
^Amidi, Amid (December 12, 2017). "Annual StLFCA Awards". Sf. Louis Film Association. Archived from the original on December 15, 2015. Retrieved December 12, 2017.
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