The Powerpuff Girls Movie

The Powerpuff Girls Movie
Promotional poster
Directed by	Craig McCracken
Produced by	Donna Castricone
Written by	Craig McCracken Lauren Faust Don Shank Amy Rogers
Starring	Cathy Cavadini Tara Strong E.G. Daily Roger L. Jackson Tom Kane Tom Kenny
Music by	James L. Venable
Distributed by	Warner Bros.
Release date(s)	July 3, 2002
Running time	72 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	US$ 11 million
Gross revenue	US$ 16,426,471

The Powerpuff Girls Movie (known within the film simply as The Powerpuff Girls) is an animated feature-length film based on the Cartoon Network animated television series of the same name. Produced by Cartoon Network for Warner Bros., the film debuted in the US on July 3, 2002. It was more or less a prequel of the series, telling the origin story of how the Powerpuff Girls were created and how they came to be the defenders of Townsville. Despite making very little profit at the box office, the film was a critical success. It was the first Hanna-Barbera/Cartoon Network Studios theatrical feature film since 1993's Once Upon a Forest. Its also the only Cartoon Network show to have a theatrical movie. All other of film based on the network shows have been usually made-for-TV films.

Plot

From left to right: Bubbles, Blossom, and Buttercup

Professor Utonium hopes to create the perfect little girl using a mixture of sugar, spice, and everything nice to make Townsville, a city plagued by criminals and villains, a better place. Things take a disastrous turn when his laboratory assistant, a destructive chimpanzee named Jojo, shoves the Professor, causing him to accidentally break a container of Chemical X, a mysterious substance that spills into the mixture, which explodes in Jojo's face. The Professor finds that the experiment was a success, having produced three little girls whom he names Blossom (the smart and mature one), Bubbles (the cute and bubbly one), and Buttercup (the tough and scrappy one). However, these girls also have superpowers as a result of the additional Chemical X, though they all immediately grow to love each other as a family.

On their first day of school, the girls learn about the game tag and begin to play amongst themselves, which quickly grows destructive when they begin using their powers. They take their game downtown, inadvertently causing massive damage to the city until the Professor calms them down. The Professor advises the girls not to use their powers in public for their own safety. The girls are completely oblivious to the impact they had on the town until the next day, when the citizens of Townsville begin to despise them and treat them as outcasts, and the Professor is arrested for creating the girls. When he doesn't arrive to pick them up from school, the girls are convinced he hates them as well. Despondent, the girls try to make their way home on foot, but end up hopelessly lost.

Seeking shelter from a thunderstorm in an alley, the girls are attacked by the vicious Gangreen Gang, but are rescued by Jojo, whose brain has mutated and grown as a result of the Chemical X incident, granting him great intelligence and the ability to speak. However, he was quickly overshadowed by the girls on the Professor's life and chose to leave, now living on the streets. Planning control of the city, Jojo gains the girls' sympathy by telling them that he too is a freak neglected by all. He then manipulates them into using their powers to help him build a laboratory over a volcano in the middle of town and a machine he claims will gain them the affections of the town; he also has them steal a batch of Chemical X from the Professor's lab. As a reward for their hard work, Jojo takes the girls to the local zoo and secretly implants small devices on all the monkeys there.

The girls return home to find the Professor being released from prison, and promise him that things will be much better. That night, Jojo teleports all the monkeys from the zoo into his volcano lair, hooking them up to his new machine and injecting them with Chemical X, turning them into evil mutant monkeys like himself. The next morning, the girls prepare to show the Professor all the "good" they did, only to discover the city being attacked by the monkeys. Jojo, renaming himself Mojo Jojo, publicly denounces the girls as willing participants of his plan, turning everyone, including the distraught Professor, against them. Crushed and dejected, the girls blast off into space.

Mojo announces his intentions to rule the planet, but his minions, now as intelligent and evil as he is, also wish to rule, and begin concocting evil plots of their own to terrorize the people of Townsville, much to Mojo's frustration. Overhearing this turmoil, and discovering that they can use their powers to combat the monkeys, the girls return to Earth, defeat the monkeys and rescue the citizens. Desperate, Mojo injects himself with vast quantities of Chemical X and grows into a giant monster, but the girls defeat him after a furious battle by pushing him off a skyscraper. Hoping to help the girls, the Professor develops an antidote for Chemical X which Mojo lands on, shrinking the defeated ape back down to size.

The girls contemplate using the Antidote X to eradicate their powers, thinking they would be accepted as normal little girls, but the citizens of Townsville protest, apologizing for misjudging the girls and thanking them for their heroic deeds. At the insistence of the Mayor, the girls agree to use their powers to defend justice in Townsville and become the city's beloved superhero crime-fighting team: the Powerpuff Girls.

Cast

Production notes

During production, The Hollywood Reporter reported that voice actresses Cathy Cavadini, Tara Strong and E.G. Daily had gone on strike, protesting that they weren't being paid enough to star in a feature. The studio publicly mulled replacing them with new actresses, but eventually a deal was reached and the trio returned to voice the Powerpuff Girls again.

Rating

This film was rated PG by the MPAA for non-stop frenetic animated action. In the Philippines, it was rated as PG-13 which caused a stir with moviegoers, for which, it is a hit.

Design

The film featured substantially revised designs for many of the TV show's characters, with a much more angular look. Many of these changes were incorporated in the future seasons of the show, such as the Professor's new eyes.^{[citation needed]}

Reception

Critics were generally favorable toward the film. On Rotten Tomatoes, it currently has a "Certified Fresh" rating of 64% from selected critics with an average reviewer score of 6.2/10 and an even better rating of 70% from top critics on the site also certifying the film as "Fresh" with an average reviewer score of 6.2/10. On Metacritic, the film currently has a rating of 65 out of 100, which indicates "generally favorable reviews". Bob Longino of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution gave the movie perhaps the highest praise of all, saying "The intricate drawings emanate 1950s futuristic pizazz like a David Hockney scenescape. The inspired script is both sinfully cynical and aw-shucks sweet". He also called it "one of the few American creations that is both gleeful pop culture and exquisite high art". However, it was also reviewed negatively by some for its violence, which many felt was too extreme and highly inappropriate for a family-oriented film.^[1]

Despite the critical success, however, the film did not do well at the box office due to poor marketing and publicity, competition with the more successful superhero film Spider-Man, and the fact that the show lost much of its popularity. It was released straight-to-VHS and DVD in some countries. Shortly after its poor commercial performance, a Samurai Jack movie that had been in development was cancelled. The Powerpuff Girls Movie grossed only $11 million against the same amount of its budget. It ended together with foreign box office with $16 million.

Home video

The film is available in America on Region 1 DVD with extras including deleted scenes, behind-the-scenes footage, commentaries and more. Despite being filmed in 1.85:1 aspect ratio, the DVD is fullscreen only, to the chagrin of reviewers ^[2] and fans. Region 2 DVD's present the film in its widescreen original aspect ratio.

See also

• Theatrically-released films based on Hanna-Barbera animations

References

External links

• The Powerpuff Girls Movie at the Internet Movie Database