The Powerpuff Girls Review
by David N. Butterworth (dnb AT dca DOT net)July 9th, 2002
THE POWERPUFF GIRLS MOVIE
A film review by David N. Butterworth
Copyright 2002 David N. Butterworth
*** (out of ****)
The city of Townsville... A sprawling urban metropolis standing tall.
Well, initially. Until some big, bad, Zen-spouting monkey comes along, reducing the city to a seething morass of running, screaming Townsvillians with his radio-controlled simian sidekicks with big honking guns.
Who y'gonna call?
The Powerpuff Girls of course - Blossom (the orange-y/pink one), Bubbles (the blue-eyed blonde one), and Buttercup (the green one with an attitude), created in a laboratory by well-meaning, square-jawed Professor Utonium, created out of sugar and spice and everything nice. Oh, and an accidental drop or two of Chemical X courtesy Jojo, a careless lab ape, giving these super cute test tube tots superhuman powers.
In the exposition of "The Powerpuff Girls Movie" (about a third of this
87-minute film), our humble narrator explains the rationale behind the girls' creation, how they come to refer to The Professor as Dad. He just wants someone to love, to nurture, to teach right from wrong (and possibly rid the city of crime overnight?). All he wants is the perfect little girl. He winds up with three very *special* little girls.
The big screen version of Craig McCracken's Cartoon Network TV series is pretty much everything you'd expect--fast, furious, and funny (not to mention extremely violent). Fans will eat it up of course, but newbies should also be entertained (before the headache kicks in that is--GONG!). Oddly enough the film's highpoint is less the climactic face-off between the Powerpuffs and the megalomaniacal Mojo Jojo (that lab monkey turned bad) but the lengthy schoolyard game of tag in which our powder-fresh heroines, at this point unaware of their super destructive powers, inadvertently trash the town and are ostracized as bug-eyed freaks.
With his big purple brain sticking way out the top of his head the sneaky Mojo uses that kinship (i.e., bug-eyed freakdom) to trick the Girls into helping him build a huge device that, he tells them, will help save the town and restore their credentials as good little girls. Instead, the machine unleashes manic monkeys bent on doing Jojo's evil bidding. FRAZZAK!! Time for the Powerpuffs to kick some primate butt (parental note: there's one "butt" in this PG-rated film but that's the extent of the lewd lingo).
Talking of parents the film is more noisy than scary; my four-year-old liked it a lot and didn't cower once (which is more than can be said of her watching "Scooby-Doo and the Cyber Chase" on video--go figure). The film does
feel a little long--how far can you stretch a 15-minute idea after all?--and it certainly won't win any awards in the plot department but it sets out with no pretensions and delivers big time.
McCracken and his team of frenetic animators throw together a nicely rounded blend of sweet domestic doings, witty wordplay with puns a plenty, and
intense, non-stop cartoon violence. The animation style is interesting--almost
simplistic at times--but always fast moving, and the Powerpuff Girls are as cute as can be, contrasting nicely with Mojo's malevolent monkeyshines.
No doubt about it, these "'Girls" rule!
--
David N. Butterworth
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