FTMN Quickie: Captain Underpants: Mega Blissmas 2020

Merry Christmas Everyone! I thought I’d take a little time out of my day to write about the latest superhero Christmas special that’s come out this year on Netflix. It’s not quite a TV episode but it’s not exactly a full movie. It clocks in at just under an hour but it feels more like a double episode of the Captain Underpants cartoon that’s also on Netflix. So much so that I’m not going to add this to my big list of Superhero movies, but I watched it, and I haven’t been that active here lately so I figured I’d still write about it. I watched the Captain Underpants movie a little while back but I never watched any of the TV series. This definitely has the same type of humor that mixes a typical 9 year old’s imagination with some meta humor, but it rehashes a very similar Christmas theme about how getting exactly what you want isn’t always the best thing.

As a 40-some minute movie it moves along at a pretty brisk pace with plenty of visual gags coming in alongside various non-sequiturs. Some of the best things about this is how some of those flashbacks and/or non-sequiturs are done in different animation styles. The majority is done in typical 2-D line-art style but some of the scenes are done in a more 3-D claymation style and/or puppeteering mixed with animation. It helps break up the visual style and gives the fantasy sequences a very different feel to the rest of the movie. The writing overall felt like it was an episode of a TV series as the side characters weren’t given any real set up or introduction. They all had quirks that felt like running gags that would be present in the series though only a couple of them were ones that were notable from the movie. There was a little bit too much time spent on the running joke of Ham Nog although they were some of the funniest random bits.

Like many Christmas movies the overall theme was pretty standard even if it was handled in a very Captain Underpants way. The two main characters Harold and George want to make Christmas better, so they come up with a 9 year old boy’s idea of what would be the perfect xXx-treme Christmas complete with a Hulk Hogan-esque Jacked Santa. Then they steal the genius kid’s time machine to go back to the first Christmas to make it a thing in the present day. Only they realize that it’s not all it’s cracked up to be and the actual Christmas spirit is so much better and giving and togetherness and blah blah blah. It ends pretty much the way it was always going to despite plenty of sidetracks with robot fights and dinosaurs on fire for some reason. Overall, it’s a pleasant distraction and for the most part a nice change of pace from the typical Christmas fare. Although in some ways it’s too much of a change of pace with much of the story’s focus on Mega Blissmas before the final ten minutes of the standard Christmas turnaround. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.