Before Dog Man, Check Out This Underrated Dav Pilkey Adaptation

Some children’s book authors are lucky enough to have just one hit literary series. Author Dav Pilkey, though, has managed to routinely produce stories that resonate with kids all over the world. The creator of Captain Underpants, Pilkey’s penned other major youth-skewing books that have garnered prominent fan bases, such as the Ricky Ricotta’s Mighty Robot series. In the modern world, though, Pilkey’s big literary triumph is Dog Man, a series of graphic novels that began publication in 2016. Since then, these texts have spawned a gigantic enough following to inspire a DreamWorks Animation feature film adaptation directed by Peter Hastings.

With Dog Man set to dominate movie theaters everywhere, it can be understandably difficult to remember that Pilkey is more than this canine crime-fighter. Heck, Pilkey and DreamWorks Animation didn’t just start working together on 2025’s Dog Man. The deeply underrated Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie from 2017 is also worth watching, particularly for how it maintains the comedic anarchy of its source material.

Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie Kept Things Simple

“It ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” as they say. So it was with bringing the Captain Underpants books to the big screen with Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie. This David Soren directorial effort sticks right to the starting conceit of the source material. Said conceit involves troublemaking goofball fourth-graders George Beard (Kevin Hart) and Harold Hutchins (Thomas Middleditch) using a hypnosis ring to transform cantankerous school principal Mr. Krupp (Ed Helms) into the jovial superhero Captain Underpants. What was meant to be a fleeting laugh becomes a major problem since anytime Krupp hears someone snap their fingers, he strips off almost all his clothes and begins to fight crime.

Happily, Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie retains Pilkey’s distinctive style in its CG animation. That’s a much happier outcome than forcing the Captain Underpants characters to adhere to the default CG human designs of past DreamWorks titles like Bee Movie and Monsters vs. Aliens. The First Epic Movie has a streamlined, hand-made look to its world. Just gaze at how the characters have simplified black dots for eyes rather than more complex, realistic pupils.

It’s an approach that already lends an absorbing quality to the proceedings. Better yet, The First Epic Movie echoes George and Harold’s rule-breaking tendencies by refusing to commit to solely computer animation for its story. Some moments are told through rough sketches mimicking what these kids would draw in their journals. Another sequence is told through the “flip-o-rama” technique found in the original Captain Underpants books. Best of all, a comedic digression involving George and Harold imagining their worst possible future selves is told through sock puppets.

It takes a real creative knucklehead to make sock puppets unfunny. Luckily, Soren and company don’t fit that description. Instead, they execute this flight of fancy and other visual abnormalities with comedic conviction. The original Captain Underpants books had illustrations that didn’t look like anything else in the world of children’s literature. It’s only fitting that Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie would be equally idiosyncratic in its look.

[RELATED – Dog Man: First Trailer for Highly Anticipated Captain Underpants Spinoff Movie Released]

Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie Is Just Deeply Amusing

Captain America: The First Epic Movie comes to the silver screen courtesy of screenwriter Nicholas Stoller, a veteran of Judd Apatow comedies and other big-screen yukfests like the two Neighbors movies. Hiring someone like Stoller ensures there’s genuine wit to the writing of Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie, even when the premise eventually involves a nefarious villain named Professor Pee-Pee Diarrheastein Poopypants Esquire (Nick Kroll).

The anything-goes comedic atmosphere also allows the requisite celebrity voice cast to deliver livelier vocal performances than you’d find in a typical 2010s DreamWorks or modern Illumination Entertainment feature. Hart and Middleditch especially have a ball representing the physical manifestation of adolescent chaos. Meanwhile, Ed Helms throws himself head-first into portraying both the maximalist wickedness of Mr. Krupp and the oblivious goofball that is Captain Underpants.

Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie isn’t without flaws, including some pacing issues that indicate its 89-minute runtime could’ve been trimmed down further. However, it’s an exceedingly charming endeavor with more visual imagination and wit than you might expect. With Dav Pilkey’s Dog Man preparing to hit theaters, now’s the perfect time to catch up on the very first big-screen adaptation of this man’s literary works.

Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie is now streaming on Netflix, Dog Man hits theaters everywhere January 31.