The Powerpuff Girls Movie

In the crime and injustice-riddled city of Townsville, Professor Utonium creates a mixture of sugar, spice, and everything nice in the hopes of producing the "perfect little girl" to improve Townsville. However, he gets shoved by his laboratory assistant, the destructive chimpanzee Jojo, which causes him to accidentally break and spill a flask of Chemical X onto the concoction; the experiment becomes successful, producing three little girls whom the Professor names Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup. He also discovers that the girls have gained superpowers from the added Chemical X. Despite the girls' recklessness with their powers, they all immediately grow to love each other as a family.

On their first day of school, the girls learn about a game of tag and begin to play it among themselves, which quickly grows destructive once they use their powers. The girls take their game downtown, where they accidentally cause massive damage to the city until the Professor calms them down. The next day, the girls are treated as outcasts by the citizens of Townsville as a result of the destruction they have caused and the Professor is arrested by an angry mob for creating the girls. Believing that using their powers again will only anger the townspeople more, the girls try to make their way home from school on foot, but they become lost in an alleyway and are attacked by the Gangreen Gang. They are rescued by Jojo, whose brain has been mutated by the Chemical X explosion, giving him superintelligence.

Planning control of the city and revenge on the Professor for replacing him with the girls, Jojo gains the girls' sympathy by convincing them that he is also hated for his powers; he tricks the girls into helping him build a laboratory and machine powered by Chemical X, which he claims will "earn them the affections of the city". Afterwards, Jojo rewards the girls with a trip to the local zoo, where he secretly implants small transportation devices on all the primates there, to which that night Jojo brings the primates to his lab and uses his new machine to inject them with Chemical X, which turns them into evil mutants like himself. The next morning, after the Professor is released from prison, the girls show him all the "good deeds" they have done, only to discover that the city is under attack by the primates. Jojo, renaming himself as Mojo Jojo, publicly announces the girls as his assistants, which damages their reputation even more and makes the distraught Professor become guilty beyond conviction. Dejected, the girls exile themselves to an asteroid in outer space.

Mojo Jojo announces his intention to rule the planet, but becomes frustrated when his minions disobey him and concoct their own plans to terrorize Townsville. Overhearing the turmoil from space, the girls return to Earth and rescue the citizens, realizing they can use their powers for good. After his army is defeated, Mojo Jojo injects himself with Chemical X and grows into a giant monster, overpowering the girls in an intense battle. Rejecting Mojo Jojo's offer of an alliance to take over the world, the girls push him off a decrepit skyscraper as soon as the Professor arrives with an antidote for Chemical X to help the girls. Mojo Jojo lands on the Antidote X, which shrinks him down to his original size, battered and defeated.

The girls consider using the Antidote X to erase their powers (thinking they would be accepted as normal girls), but the people of Townsville protest against this and apologize for misjudging them, before thanking them for their heroic deeds. At the request of Townsville's Mayor, the girls agree to use their powers to defend Townsville with the Professor's permission, becoming the city's beloved crime-fighting superhero team "the Powerpuff Girls".

• Cathy Cavadini as Blossom, the intelligent and dutiful leader of the Powerpuff Girls.
• Tara Strong as Bubbles, the sweet and cheerful member of the Powerpuff Girls.
• E. G. Daily as Buttercup, the tough and brash member of the Powerpuff Girls.
• Roger L. Jackson as Mojo Jojo, a chimpanzee mutated by Chemical X who becomes the Powerpuff Girls' archenemy.
• Tom Kane as Professor Utonium, the Powerpuff Girls' creator and father; and Talking Dog, a small white dog who is blunt, abrasive and insulting.
• Tom Kenny as the Mayor of Townsville, Narrator, Mitch Mitchelson, Snake and Lil' Arturo.
• Jennifer Hale as Ms. Sandy Keane, the Powerpuff Girls' schoolteacher.
• Jennifer Martin as Ms. Sarah Bellum, the Mayor's secretary.
• Jeff Bennett as Ace, Big Billy and Grubber.
• Grey DeLisle and Phil LaMarr as additional character voices
• Rob Paulsen, Kevin Michael Richardson, and Frank Welker as various evil primates (credited as "Whole Lotta Monkeys").

When developing the film, series' creator/director Craig McCracken did not want the film to appeal exclusively to girls as the merchandise made it out to be (with jewelry and necklaces being sold with the characters plastered over it) and wanted to make a film about what the Powerpuff Girls were really meant to be. McCracken said that there was no real difference when directing a film in comparison to a standard TV episode. He states:

When we make the TV show, we look at them as mini films. The show is really condensed, it always keeps moving and it's got an energy level to it because of the time limitation, so my first concern was, are we going to lose that pacing going into a long form? But as it turned out, the movie still moves at the same pace that the show does. It still has that distinctive feeling to it.[3]

During production, McCracken was originally encouraged by Cartoon Network to make an edgier movie; he recalls via Tumblr:

When we started the film I was encouraged by CN to make the movie for “25 year old guys.” So we upped the seriousness and action and down played the funny. By the time we finished there was a regime change at CN and the new heads of the Network were upset we didn’t make a poppy, colourful kids movie... This was when they first had the idea that they wanted to try producing animation for older audiences, Samurai Jack was a part of this thinking as well. We were sort of the guinea pigs for what would later evolve into Adult Swim.[4]

The film's animation was provided by Rough Draft Korea, with additional animation done at Mercury Filmworks and Munich Animation Film.

The Powerpuff Girls Movie was released in theaters on July 3, 2002, before making its television debut on Cartoon Network on May 23, 2003.[5] In theaters, the film was accompanied with a Dexter's Laboratory short titled "Chicken Scratch", which later aired as part of the series' fourth season.

• List of films based on Hanna-Barbera cartoons

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• Official website
• The Powerpuff Girls Movie on IMDb
• The Powerpuff Girls Movie at Box Office Mojo
• The Powerpuff Girls Movie at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Powerpuff Girls Movie at the TCM Movie Database