Fourth-grade friends George and Harold have a shared love of pranks and comic books -- and turning their principal into an undies-wearing superhero.
13 May Captain Underpants (2018-20)
Underawares
I actually steer my kids to this area rather than ordinary fare. It has silliness and poor production values. While the stories are vacuous, they are refreshingly free of messages and morals. But the value to me is the incredible fun they have with shifted nesting, what I sometimes call ‘folding’.
If you don’t have kids, you won’t know this. It is two boys in school. All the adults are staff at the school or otherwise connected. They draw comic books, which establish the world that is the focus of the stories. The narrative stance shifts among three positions: some offscreen intro fellow, the kids ‘drawing’ the story and the kids in the story recounting the action. That action uses a number of media types from cartoons to puppets to stop motion collage. Basically, they use techniques from old kiddie shows with all the charm that evokes.
Don’t be fooled by the toilet humour which pervades this. It is no more distracting than usual devices, and clearly self-parody.
Posted in 2022
Ted’s Evaluation — 3 of 3: Worth watching.
No Comments