Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.

I’m telling you... it’s better than you think it’s going to be... just take a gander at what our Talk Backer, The Pole Of Justice, had to say after stumbling out of a screening...

Minor, creampuff spoilers:

Powerpuff Girls: The Movie... where to begin? Well, I’m a fan, so I was admittedly pretty primed to see this, and seeing what they did with the geek reference fest of “Meet The Beat Alls,” it’s anyone’s guess what kind of in-joke Hell McCracken and Co. have cooked up for us...

Speaking of in-jokes, you could watch the thing for those alone (two characters talk entirely in Van Halen references, Mojo’s first big scene reminds me of GHOST DOG and... God help us... there’s even a quick scene that I swear they took from TETSUO II: THE BODY HAMMER.) All of which is well and good, but how does the thing hang together?

The film actually drug a bit for me in the first reel or so, although “drug” in this context is extremely relative (I love slow, formalist work, but in a Powerpuff Girls movie, even a fairly brisk pace for the exposition seems a bit slow.) Fortunately, that doesn’t last long, although the film doesn’t truly kick into high gear until Mojo Jojo enacts his evil plan...

... and when that happens, all bets are off. There are moments here that are so lightning fast that I was reminded of the Pokemon epilepsy syndrome: watching it unprepared in a theatre with a big screen might give some a serious headache. For the rest of us, this is probably the most energetic, spastic, and generally high octane thing that American animation has produced. So much so, in fact, that when the film takes a bit of a breather (the girls strand themselves on an asteroid... don’t ask), it takes the duration of the scene for the ringing in your head to go away.

So, um... is it any GOOD? Yeah. Very. I was actually reminded of the last 20 minutes of SHAOLIN SOCCER, in that sheer, unadulterated, uncut kickass simply flew from the screen in seemingly random (but very, very energetic) directions. The animation isn’t particularly more detailed or deeper than the show, but the visual concepts, as well as the flow of the action, are considerably more ambitious (the “Tag” sequence, wherein Blossom does that Tetsuo run-on-the-side-of-the-building thing, among others, is as kinetic as anything I’ve witnessed in my 33 years on this planet.) Dear God.

Throw a big borderline Armageddon (the actual thing, not the movie) ending on top of this, and... well... I was EXHAUSTED. It seems odd in the extreme to be emotionally drained by something this tongue in cheek, but I was seriously as dazed after PPG: THE MOVIE as I was after the first time I saw AKIRA. I wouldn’t draw too many conceptual parallels between the two works (in fact, I wouldn’t draw any at all,) but the feeling of having pulled an entire, catacalysmic universe into your skull via your eyeballs is the same.

Which leads me to: this thing way well scare the living snot out of younger kids. Mojo looks downright unsettling in the last 20 minutes, and the sheer, hardcore intensity of the goings on might be too much for some kids under the age of, I dunno, eight (this is a guess: I have no kids I know well enough to give a real estimate.) There’s nothing OBJECTIONABLE in it, but the overall whirlwind may get the panic juices flowing in the wee ones. And an extended crying sequence, courtesy of the freakishly high-pitched Bubbles, might not help matters either (I swear, I thought I heard some digital feedback emanating from the speakers during one wail.)

So... use your judgment as to whether or not to take the kids (although really, it’s only the YOUNG young ones I’d be concerned about,) but, IMHO, all good geeks need to see this.

The Pole Of Justice... out.