Captain Underpants meshes a variety of humor into its First Epic Movie. Its most prominent comedy types are toilet humor, meta-jokes and rapid-fire comedy. Toilet humor was the most expected variant seeing how the film’s based-on-novels thrive off of it (the film's title literally stems from such humor). There’s plenty of childish crudity throughout the feature, yet there’s a charming nature to such jokes that avoids obnoxiousness.
Yet it’s the self-referential and rapid-fire comedy (comedy the novels also utilize) where the film really shines, spouting off an effective mixture of zany and/or wall-breaking jokes that gives the potty humor wit. It is distracting to have the film’s 4th-grade protagonists voiced by adult actors who make no attempts at trying to sound like children. I understand it’s likely because the producers wanted well-known celebrities to attract more viewers, but the film could have at least made a self-referential jab at its unnatural voice casting. Captain Underpants ultimately succeeds because it never takes itself overly serious—the film is out to have fun and give the audience a lighthearted good time, which is exactly what it achieves.
Yet it’s the self-referential and rapid-fire comedy (comedy the novels also utilize) where the film really shines, spouting off an effective mixture of zany and/or wall-breaking jokes that gives the potty humor wit. It is distracting to have the film’s 4th-grade protagonists voiced by adult actors who make no attempts at trying to sound like children. I understand it’s likely because the producers wanted well-known celebrities to attract more viewers, but the film could have at least made a self-referential jab at its unnatural voice casting. Captain Underpants ultimately succeeds because it never takes itself overly serious—the film is out to have fun and give the audience a lighthearted good time, which is exactly what it achieves.
Death Note:
Awful, abysmal, atrocious, and a prime example of how not to adapt a series.
Death Note is on The Last Airbender’s level of taking a fantastic series and cramming it into an under two-hour film that butchers nearly every successful aspect. The source material’s characters, plot, atmosphere, environment and memorable scenes are all gone and replaced with highly inferior imitations. Pretty much everything is wrong with this adaptation except Willem Dafoe being cast as Ryuk—since he looks and acts the part ideally (though the character is butchered)—and Misa being replaced by the more competent Mia (the Death Note series is not without its flaws, and well-written/full potential females is something it desperately lacked).
Death Note is an appalling display of not understanding what makes the original series work—replacing the thrilling mind games with garbage clichés and turning the series’s two most intelligent characters (one considered the world’s greatest detective) into childish idiots who do the dumbest things imaginable. By no means should Death Note be watched over its exceptional series (or the two Japanese movie adaptations) save to see how not to make a Japanese-to-English adaptation (on the flip side, watch Edge of Tomorrow to see how it is possible to make a successful, superior Japanese-to-English adaptation).
Death Note is an appalling display of not understanding what makes the original series work—replacing the thrilling mind games with garbage clichés and turning the series’s two most intelligent characters (one considered the world’s greatest detective) into childish idiots who do the dumbest things imaginable. By no means should Death Note be watched over its exceptional series (or the two Japanese movie adaptations) save to see how not to make a Japanese-to-English adaptation (on the flip side, watch Edge of Tomorrow to see how it is possible to make a successful, superior Japanese-to-English adaptation).
