The Powerpuff Girls Movie

Successfully super-sized but otherwise no different from an episode of its TV inspiration, The Powerpuff Girls Movie, like most entries in the currently trendy TV-cartoons-stretched-to-feature-length-films genre, offers little to justify its big-screen release. Based on the Cartoon Network's endearing, ingenious and inventively animated show about three kindergarten cutie-pies who happen to be superheroes, the picture does at least pick an unexplored part of the program's lore for its plot: the girls' very first adventure after being created by Professor Utonium from sugar, spice and everything nice (accidentally mixed with Chemical X, which gives them superpowers). Still, except for the fact that it's a little dark, the whole movie easily could have been compressed into a half-hour episode of the show, which is always an endlessly amusing combination of good moral lessons, great characters, funny monsters, and a delicious sense of irony. Optional. (R. Blackwelder)