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“There are things that read fine in the book that, when you put them on a big screen, we’re walking a line,” Soria says. In recent years, the “Captain Underpants” series has topped the American Library Assn.’s list of the most challenged books multiple times - even beating out “Fifty Shades of Grey”- because of what some deem its offensive and inappropriate content.įor the team behind the “Captain Underpants” movie, striking a tone that captured the anarchic and irreverent spirit of the books without tipping over into gratuitous juvenile humor or excessive brattiness involved a tricky balancing act. For one thing, there is the rampant potty humor, which may give kids endless fits of giggles but has often been met with eye rolls or worse from some parents and educators who regard the books as a kind of literary junk food. Translating “Captain Underpants” from the page to the screen wasn’t as straightforward as it might seem, however. Just send me a couple of tickets to the premiere.’ ” “I was like, ‘I don’t even have to think about this anymore. “Once I met David, it was like a huge load fell off my back,” he says. Pilkey immediately placed his full confidence in Soren. So many animated features these days are getting more and more towards naturalism to the point where they could almost be live-action, so it was great to run away from that and go back to places that I grew up with.” “Unlike most movies out there right now, ‘Captain Underpants’ really felt like it could be a cartoon, which was a fun place to start. stuff from Chuck Jones and Tex Avery,” Soren says. “We connected a lot on some of our influences, like the Little Rascals and the Three Stooges and all the old Warner Bros. Pilkey had been a fan of Soren’s 2013’s animated film “Turbo,” the story of a garden snail who dreams of racing in the Indianapolis 500, and in an initial meeting the two bonded over shared creative loves. In 2015, after initial director Rob Letterman left the project, David Soren stepped in to take the helm. “I think he needed them to go somewhere where they’d get the love that he’s put into them and where he trusted the team.” “These books are Dav’s babies and it’s very personal to him - he is George and Harold,” says Mark Swift, who produced the “Captain Underpants” movie alongside Mireille Soria. (“They were completely straight-faced - it was so funny,” Pilkey remembered.) Finally, in 2011, his resistance softened, and the animation studio acquired the feature film rights. At one point, as part of the effort to woo him, the author was invited to the DreamWorks campus and found it filled with staffers nonchalantly wearing underwear outside their pants. The DreamWorks Animation film brings Pilkey’s unique blend of free-wheeling adventure, silly puns and unapologetic bathroom humor to the big screen for the first time, as George (voiced by Kevin Hart), Harold (Thomas Middleditch) and their underwear-clad creation (Ed Helms) take on the dastardly Professor Poopypants (Nick Kroll), who is out to rid the world of laughter.ĭreamWorks Animation pursued Pilkey with particular fervor. Or buy a ticket to “Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie,” which opens this weekend. If any of that sounds confusing, you can ask any 9-year-old to explain it. Krupp who is brought to life when Krupp is hypnotized by a mischievous fourth-graders George Beard and Harold Hutchins.Īcross 12 books and several spinoffs, Captain Underpants has valiantly defended “truth, justice and all that is pre-shrunk and cottony” in epic tales featuring talking toilets, zombie nerds and evil aliens - all of them rendered with a simple, kid-friendly drawing style and generous helpings of words like “barf,” “butt” and “pee-pee” for those (of whatever age) who have a taste for that kind of thing. To be more precise, he’s the do-gooder alter ego of a cranky, tyrannical principal named Mr. Diaper, Wedgie Woman and Sir Stinks-a-Lot. “That keeps me humble.”Ĭaptain Underpants, for the uninitiated, is a pudgy, bald superhero in a red cape and tighty-whities who - with a cheerful cry of “tra la laaa!” - does battle with villains with names like Dr. One of the kids raised her hand and said, ‘Is that you?’ ” He laughed. “I was at a kindergarten recently and I drew a big picture of Captain Underpants on the chalkboard. “Kids are so honest,” Pilkey says in the library of Los Angeles’ Overland Avenue Elementary School after one such meet-and-greet with a group of fourth- and fifth-graders. For the author and illustrator of the bestselling “Captain Underpants” books - a series that has been delighting kids and occasionally horrifying their parents for 20 years - every public appearance involves a bit of a roll of the dice. When Dav Pilkey meets his fans, he’s never quite sure what to expect.