The Powerpuff Girls Movie (2002)
Featuring the voices of Cathy Cavadini, Tara Strong, Elizabeth Daily; d. Craig McCracken; A-

This. Movie. Effing. Rules.

It doesn’t matter how or why. It just does.

I could sing the praises of this movie, pinpointing its witty dialogue, its superb animation (and this is from a cartoon with overly simplistic and geometrical drawing), its excellent score (and cartoons rarely have good scores), or I could talk about the thrill I got seeing one of my favorite television cartoons on the screen, but what would be the point? Any explanation I had for why this movie simply rocked was deemed ridiculous when I watched the film.

It’s an exciting experience. It’s a refreshing experience. It’s just a gosh-darned adrenaline rushing experience worth every single penny paid for admission. You may try to avoid it merely because it’s one movie in a long line of big screen adaptations of small screen cartoons, but you’d be fooling yourself if you did that. For one, Cartoon Network is ten times the station Nickelodeon is (who only produce flash in the pan cartoons), and with The Powerpuff Girls Movie they just proved they’re ten times the movie studio Nickelodeon is, too. The Powerpuff Girls Movie isn’t some dull device used to get the studio more money. It’s an effectively entertaining movie that proves just why the show’s fans love the girls as much as they do. It’s surprisingly well paced for a children’s movie (children’s movies usually move too fast for my liking; even the two hour plus Harry Potter did such), and appeals to the adults in the audience just as well as the kids (and all the geeks at heart, too).

The only problem with this movie is that, post 9/11, its superhero hijinks may be a bit unnerving to watch. It’s a well known fact that superheroes pretty much destroy the city trying to save it, and The Powerpuff Girls Movie makes no exceptions to that. In fact, the it’s self-conscious of that fact, as a good 10 minutes of the movie deals with a kinetic game of tag played by the girls who were previously ignorant of the game (for obvious reasons) that leads them into the city of Townsville (and destroys the city in the process, while leaving its inhabitants peeved at the damage). Even still, viewers who may find this a little bit disturbing will need to suspend their disbelief and realize that this is a superhero cartoon, and that in these types of situations city patrons are a little bit lenient on how they react to their city being destroyed.

There are too many reasons I could point out as to why you should see this movie. The movie isn’t exclusive, so even people who had never seen the show will get a thrill out of it. AND if all else fails, the trailer to Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is attached to it, as is a 10 minute cartoon of Dexter’s Laboratory (which is THE BEST cartoon on Cartoon Network), and, hotdam! Professor Utonium has a nice bod (who’da thunk?).