The ever-present Kevin Hart lends his crinkly voice to George, a feckless (and neckless) budding comic book artist who teams up with classmate Harold (Thomas Middleditch) to hypnotize their elementary school principal (Ed Helms) into thinking he’s an infantile superhero. In-joke asides to Jerome “Curly” Horowitz and German Industrialist/Nuremberg posterchild Alfred Krupp bring smiles. And since most superheroes appear to be flying around in their skivvies, the rationale behind the titular nickname adds a third chuckle. But the one-joke soon wears thin, and nothing — particularly the labor-saving animation and hideous-to-behold character design — can keep Underpants from stinking. In theory, one should embrace a children’s film as unapologetically scatalogical as this, instead of sitting for 89 minutes as though posing for a painting. That said, when it was over, the kids I saw it with applauded with more rigor than I did after my first viewing of Taxi Driver. (2017) — Scott Marks