Sightlines · reception

How Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie was received

2017 · David Soren · Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie on Sightlines

The arc

A warmly reviewed modest hit in summer 2017, it got a little lost in DreamWorks' shadow of bigger franchises — but it's since become a quiet 'actually, this one's great' pick, praised as one of the most faithful book-to-screen adaptations in kids' animation.

What’s debated

The recurring fight is whether it's a genuinely clever, underrated DreamWorks gem or just well-executed toilet humor — with book-series millennials firmly on team gem.

Its footprint

'Tra-la-laaa!' does a lot of heavy lifting, and the film rides three decades of Dav Pilkey playground nostalgia; Weird Al Yankovic's theme song gives it instant novelty-canon status.

Where it stands

A beloved-but-overlooked entry in the DreamWorks catalog — the kind of film Letterboxd reviewers open with 'why did nobody tell me this was good?'

Did you know? At roughly $38 million it was DreamWorks Animation's cheapest feature to date, made possible by outsourcing animation to Mikros Image in Montreal — and 'Weird Al' Yankovic wrote and performed its theme song.