Preschool Confidential

THE HEROIC TRIO: Buttercup, Blossom and Bubbles in action.

The Powerpuff Girls’ ass-kicking toddlers hit the big screen.

THE POWERPUFF GIRLS

by Sam Adams

THE POWERPUFF GIRLSDirected by Craig McCracken A Warner Bros. release Now playing at area theaters

Apart from the joys of watching three animated preschool girls kick large amounts of ass -- which are, it should be noted, not to be underestimated in the slightest -- the most intense pleasure that comes from watching The Powerpuff Girls on TV comes from the relentless determination with which creator Craig McCracken and crew reinvent the form. Usually doled out in 8- to 12-minute segments, the episodes begin and end in exactly the same fashion, with the narrator (Tom Kenny) setting the scene (“the city of Townsville”) and then proclaiming how the Girls have “saved the day.” But in between those two fixed points, oh, how The Powerpuff Girls pops wheelies off the beaten track. Take “The Bare Facts,” available on one of the show’s numerous video collections, where the same story is retold from several different characters’ points of view, shifting styles each time. When we shift to the P.O.V. of Townsville’s goofily clueless mayor, who happens to be blindfolded at the time, the screen goes completely black -- not the kind of risky maneuver you’ll find in your average “children’s show.”

On top of all that, of course, are the girls themselves: bossy Blossom (voiced by Catherine Cavadini), brassy Buttercup (E.G. Daily) and baby Bubbles (Tara Strong), three superhuman crimefighting toddlers cooked up by accident when a frisky lab monkey accidently knocked a flask of "Chemical X" into a carefully prepared mixture of sugar, spice and everything nice. That story, recounted in brisk voiceover at the beginning of each TV installment, lays the groundwork for the show's first theatrical feature. (Technically, it might be the only one, but the arrangement so screams "developing franchise" that you can't help but wonder what they'd do in the sequel.)

The anarchic pace of the TV show is necessarily toned down for this feature-length outing, although doing so lets out a lot of steam. The filmmakers wring laughs (and not a few sniffles) out of the girls' uneasy adjustment to "normal" life. Everything goes fine on their first day of kindergarten, until they're introduced to the game of tag, which they play so energetically that they end up laying waste to a good chunk of the city. But the mixture of self-referential fun and all-out corn is a delicate one, and The Powerpuff Girls too often gets the sap without the spunk. Even the show's perennial supervillan, megalomaniacal monkey mastermind Mojo Jojo (Roger L. Jackson) is a few bananas short of a bunch. The film builds, eventually, to a delirious climax where the Girls take on a horde of Chemical X-enhanced apes, with names like Rocko Socko and weapons like the "Orangu-tank." But the benefits of getting a widescreen look at the op-art paradise that is Townsville -- as in South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, you can actually the see the pulp in the colored paper backgrounds -- are outweighed by the fact that it takes an hour for the girls to discover what they're best at, which is to say, whooping ass. Apparently McCracken and co. have started to take the Girls' status as preteen role models seriously, which means a lot of homey talks from their father/creator Professor Utonium (Tom Kane) about their "unique specialness" and how not everyone will understand it. That kind of stuff works fine in small doses, but here it's a little bit deadly, and more dangerous than a gaggle of rampaging chimps.