Contemporary Cult: Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie (2017)

Tra-la-laaaaaaa!

I didn't grow up reading Danny Peary's Cult Movies books and I'm not of the following generation who created podcasts inspired by them - though I listen to and love those podcasts. Folks of my half-generation need our own canon of contemporary cult cinema. It's time for us to define our "classics, sleepers, weird and wonderful," as Peary puts it. We'll debate the definition of a "cult movie" by stretching the boundaries, make predictions about a film's future cultability, and honor a new generation of artists in this new, on-going series called Contemporary Cult. 

Some editions of Contemporary Cult will be for paid subscribers, while others will be unlocked for all. Make sure to sign up here to receive all editions as they come out. 

I was the perfect age for Captain Underpants. The book series, from author Dav Pilkey (whose book Dogzilla and Dumb Bunnies series were also in my house), is exactly three days older than I am. By the time I was old enough to read the books, there were already nine entries (including the activity books), becoming Scholastic Book sale and Barnes and Noble, Jr. essentials.

Each entry in the toilet-humor crime-fighting graphic novel series would end in a cliffhanger of some sort, one that Pilkey promised to wrap up in the next book, which was already titled and premised on the last page of the one you were reading. Because more than a few entries were already out, I could soon convince my mother to get me the next one. I doubt she was really crazy about me reading comics filled with nothing but poopy pants and bionic boogers (she was not a book banner by any means, but I was banned from borrowing the book Totally Gross from Ripley's Believe It or Not! after I brought it home from the school library and she found it totally gross...), but at least I was reading.

The final page of Captain Underpants and the Preposterous Plight of the Purple Potty People promised new entries in the Captain Underpants universe, but they were never to be found. Pilkey had to step away from his career to take care of his sick father and all this young boy knew was that the story was stopped in its tracks. By the time Pilkey returned with Captain Underpants and the Terrifying Return of Tippy Tinkletrousers, I was fifteen and far removed from the middle-elementary reading levels the books provided.

When the first, and to date only, movie came out in 2017, however, being nineteen was not going to stop me. I had gotten over the age where cartoons and toys aren't cool and had completely looped back around to needing some childhood favorites to make it through the dog days of adulthood. (That feeling never went away, we just started a podcast about it.)

It was everything I always wanted it to be.

For starters, the movie stays pretty close to the basic concept of the books. Fourth-graders George and Harold spend their school days daydreaming, pulling pranks on their teachers, and, most importantly, creating their own comic books.* When they accidentally hypnotize their principal, he becomes the real-life version of their most famous comic creation, Captain Underpants. It's perfect fourth-grade humor. "See, most superheroes look like they're flying around in their underwear," Harold says in the movie. "Well, this guy actually does," George finishes. Partially inspired by the fourth book in the series, Principal Krupp/Captain Underpants must take down the new evil scientist science teacher, Professor Pee-Pee Diarrheastein Poopypants.

*As a kid, I related to these two class clowns. I wasn't quite as pranksterous, but all my friends and I did spend every extra moment of our free time writing and drawing satiric totally-unserious superhero comics. Was that because of Captain Underpants? It's a chicken or the egg kind of situation.