The city of Townsville: suffering under a crimewave, the city can't cope, so a kindly professor decides to come up with a solution. By mixing sugar, spice and all things nice with the mysterious Chemical X, he creates the Powerpuff Girls - three superpowered little girls. Unfortunately the experiment also unleashes Mojo Jojo, a highly advanced ape with big plans...
There comes a time in life when you have to put away childish things... but what kind of a world would it be if you couldn't watch a cartoon once in a while? Would you like to live in that world? No. Over the years we've enjoyed The Tick, Ren and Stimpy, Earthworm Jim and Space Ghost Coast to Coast; this, the feature length outing for the cult cartoon series The Powerpuff Girls, may be more juvenile than those, but its sheer exuberance is infectious.
The plot takes the form of an origin story, detailing how the girls were first presented to the city and their struggle to fit in. Blossom is the sensible one, Buttercup is the one with the temper and Bubbles is the daffy one. After their game of tag goes disastrously wrong, with the superheroines smashing up the city in their high spirits, the Professor is taken away by the police and Mojo Jojo tricks the outcast girls into helping him make an army of villainous apes.
There are themes of responsibility, tolerance and family: the father figure Professor dotes endearingly over the girls, even when they make themselves seriously unpopular. The lesson seems to be that you should clean up your own mess, either that or (rather less admirably) violence is a good solution to your problems - this must feature the most extreme violence of any kids cartoon out of Hollywood. Basically, it has the most destruction you'll have seen since that last Godzilla movie you watched. Also with: a Planet of the Apes in-joke - excellent. Music by James L. Venable.
