The Powerpuff Girls Movie
***
Cinema Releases - October 18, 2002
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate PG. USA.
73 minutes. Directed by Craig McCracken. Written by Charlie Bean, Craig
McCracken, Lauren Faust, Paul Rudish, Don Shank; based on the television
series created by McCracken. An animated film with the voices of Catherine
Cavadini, Tara Charendoff, E.G. Daily, Roger L. Jackson, Tom Kenny, Tom
Kane.
The Powerpuff Girls are made, quite literally,
from sugar, spice and all things nice, as well as an agent called Chemical
X. They've been created by a square-jawed father figure named Professor Utonium,
they look like little fairies with grrrl power, and they can zoom across
the sky, put things together real quick and get laser beams a-shootin' from
their eyes.
The cartoon heroines are Blossom (Catherine Cavadini),
the leader figure who comes up with most of the helpful ideas and has an
orange hue. Bubbles (Tara Charendoff) is the cutesy blonde, fretting and
giggling all the way. Buttercup (E.G. Daily) stands tall, green and mean;
she's the tough little Gen-Xer of the group, always on the sidelines with
the moaning and the tutting.
The girls are surrounded by faces and architecture
that sorta look futuristic and sorta seem influenced by the 1930s; we feel
like we're looking at old Warner Bros. cartoons, albeit without that ACME
logo all over the place. The expressions of the Powerpuffs themselves are
distinctive for their strong black eyes and sly little mouths; they look
like hip, alternative little drawings, and although they're from a TV show
that plays on Cartoon Network, they might look more at home in anime, or
in the pages of a skater comic.
Whatever the hell the Powerpuff Girls are, they
have their adult fans, and I must confess to being one of them. The animation
is quite unreasonably thrilling, and the characters make me smirk. Blame
my cousin Sacha, who always used to put them on my television when she came
round for Sunday dinner; she's the same age as me, but she giggles like a
tot at the adventures of Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup, and has now succeeded
in drawing me in.
No joke here. The Powerpuff phenomenon is infectiously
cool, with its arresting surface, and stories that proudly announce themselves
as rehashes of old comic-book formulas. The movie opens with an announcement
by a trumpeting narrator, who tells us: "The city of Townsville was in really,
really, really big trouble!" Before we even meet the characters who are going
to save the day, we're being told to have ironic distance and make ourselves
go along for the ride.
How can anyone resist a cartoon in which the arch
enemy of three crime-fighting schoolkids is a monkey called Mojo Jojo? Not
only a monkey called Mojo Jojo, but a monkey called Mojo Jojo who cackles,
gives lectures in the voice of a bellowing Chinese fight instructor and has
a brain so large that he has to wear a paper bag over his head. Some concepts
are so nutso that they go past lameness and end up good, and seem to have
been created with such an effect in mind.
"The Powerfuff Girls Movie" tells
the story right from the beginning, showing the girls being created in Professor
Utonium's lab before using their superpowers in a game of tag and accidentally
wreaking havoc on Townsville. Mojo Jojo, calculating rascal that he is, tells
the innocent trio that they can redeem themselves and make people like them
by helping him with his plans. Little do they realise that Mojo Jojo is a
villain, intent on ruling the world by creating a race of
super-monkeys.
This leads to much destruction by all sorts of
apes, which panics the citizens of Townsville and calls upon the Powerpuff
Girls to figure out a solution. It also inspires a montage demonstrating
the monkey race in the midst of a power struggle, which has got to be one
of the most brilliant comic set pieces of the year. I would not dream of
revealing the particulars, although I cannot resist quoting what Mojo Jojo
says at the end of it: "Do not continue your ramblings, for my ramblings
are the ramblings to be obeyed!"
Okay, okay, I know this is all very inane and
silly, and that there's no emotion anywhere, and that the girls will seem
more or less identical unless you've been watching far too much of the TV
show. But "The Powerpuff Girls Movie" has something about it with the power
to make us grin. It also has a very important message for kids: Never, under
any circumstances, put faith in a talking monkey.
COPYRIGHT©
2002 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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