Author/illustrator Dav Pilkey is best known for his long-running, bestselling Captain Underpants children’s book series, which ran from 1997 to 2016. It told the story of two Ohio fourth-graders, George Beard and Harold Hutchins, who sometimes create comics for their own amusement. One of their characters is Captain Underpants, and they manage to hypnotize their grumpy principal into thinking that he is the goofy superhero. But before all that, George and Harold created a character called Dog Man—a lively police officer with the head of a dog and the body of a human. He protects an unnamed city from various bizarre threats in a series of hilarious, episodic graphic novels. In Dog Man (2016), for example, he faces off against criminal mastermind Petey, “the world’s most evilest cat,” who invents a device that erases the words from every single book on Earth, thus making everyone “supa dumb.” Dog Man saves the day and puts Petey in Cat Jail, but the villain promptly escapes by using a can of “Living Spray” to bring a hot dog to life—inadvertently starting a “weenie-lution.”

Sadly, the “weenie war” and the events leading up to it are absent from Dog Man, a new animated movie adaptation, but the film draws on events from other series entries to deliver a sometimes frenetic but always entertaining watch. It premieres in theaters on Jan. 31.

The main appeal of the Dog Man books is their intentionally simple and amateurish style, complete with occasional misspellings, which makes them feel very much like the creations of two enthusiastic and creative kids. Pilkey also shows a deep understanding of what makes kids laugh. There’s occasional bathroom humor, of course, as when the chief of police gathers all the cops together, including a sheepish Dog Man, to ask, “Alright, which one of you chewed up my tissues and ate my slippers and peed on my floor?” There are also frequent jokes that highlight the ridiculousness of supervillains, such as a giant sign flashing “Petey’s Secret Lab” on the outside of Petey’s mad-science laboratory, or an antagonist exclaiming, “What do I have to do to get a little respect around here? Do I have to destroy everything?”

However, the Dog Man series also features surprisingly touching moments. For example, at one point, Petey creates a clone of himself as a kitten (Li’l Petey), whom he slowly grows to love like a son; it’s also revealed that Petey has a sad backstory in which his father abandoned him when he was young.

The new film, written and directed by Animaniacs writer Peter Hastings, manages to balance the series’ comedic and affecting elements while also getting across Pilkey’s distinctively minimalist art style—and in CGI form, no less. Roughly the first third of the movie tears through Dog Man’s origin story and a few of his initial adventures at breakneck speed; the pace is so intense, in fact, that it verges on the exhausting—a frequent pitfall of animated films, such as last year’s The Wild Robot. Fortunately, Dog Man downshifts to include quieter scenes amid the wilder shenanigans, around the point it starts telling the story of Pilkey’s third installment, 2017’s A Tale of Two Kitties.

That’s not to say that there aren’t still plenty of jokes and action scenes, including a long sequence in which several buildings come alive and wreak havoc, and a plotline involving a cybernetically enhanced, telekinetic tropical fish named Flippy (voiced by Ricky Gervais) on a mission to eliminate “do-gooders.” However, the quieter scenes are among the most memorable, such as one that effectively shows how upbeat Li’l Petey (newcomer Lucas Hopkins Calderon) has touched Petey’s heart with his simple optimism. There’s also a wise, emotionally complicated scene in which Petey (a very good Pete Davidson) must explain to his clone son that his difficult, uncaring Grampa (Stephen Root) is someone who simply doesn’t want to change the way he treats others.

Such moments add surprising depth to what is primarily a wacky comedy, offering a richer viewing experience for both kids and adults. It will almost certainly have audiences looking forward to a sequel—perhaps based on 2017’s Dog Man and Cat Kid, in which Li’l Petey becomes a Robinlike super-sidekick, and a possible movie about Dog Man (“the thinking man’s Rin Tin Tin”) becomes a plot point. Only two very funny fourth graders could imagine such a thing.

David Rapp is the senior Indie editor.