The Powerpuff Girls are arguably one of the best things to come out of the early days of Cartoon Network. Young heroes with “ultra super powers” that, while not original, presented themselves in original packaging in the form of cute super-deformed (chibi even?) girls and the challenges they face not just from their eccentric rogue’s gallery (which has amongst its ranks living giant amoebas in gangster hats, a pink-antennaed hillbilly bigfoot, and a cross-dressing Satan) but from the drama of their conflicting personalities and daily preschool life. Anywho, the origin story of these titanic tykes has never been fully shown until the geniuses at Cartoon Network released a theatrical run in 2002. Not only were their relationships and powers explored within the first 25 minutes, but it showed just how fragile is the position of a young (both in age and experience) individual with superhuman abilities when your city is made of very destructible pieces. So as they are shunned by their community, they go running unwittingly into the care of a dirty monkey hobo, who promises that together they can make the town love them. Instead the plan was to turn an entire population of simians at the zoo into himself (super-intelligent with protruding brains) leading to a funny scene where each ape or monkey tries to outdo each other in dastardly plans for destroying the city. And at first, the girls are reluctant to help everyone because of how they were treated by the uncaring masses, but once the threat of damn dirty apes reaches their father, they unleash righteous fury upon all the monkey business going on. Then it comes to a head when the lead monkey (Mojo Jojo) injects more of the super-power-giving serum into his own head, becoming MO than BEFOr. After recreating the King Kong scene, with gratuitous We-can-rule-together-because-we-are-alike, the girls take him down, the town loves them and wants them to continue the super-heroing, and the narrator gets to say his famous lines from the intros and end of every episode.
Overall, the movie was a good ol’ nostalgic trip. The rich personalities of each character are spot-on and the action scenes are pretty good despite the trademark animation of Gendy Tartovski being what it is. And while it follows the superhero movie formula strictly by the book, it was still an enjoyable film in its own right.
Amusing viewpoint on the Powerpuff girls and the proper response to haters.
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