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It’s easy to understand the appeal of the Powerpuff Girls — just look at their eyes. 

These animated superheroines see the world with planet-sized orbs capable of expressing glee, frustration, curiosity, anger, surprise and Zen calm. They narrow to slits and get so wide they look like they might pop out of their oblong skulls. And when the girls are in action, their eyes shoot lasers — very cool. 

It’s no wonder the girls are drawn without noses or fingers — with peepers like that, they don’t need them. 

Unfortunately, the eyes are about the only remarkable thing about “The Powerpuff Girls Movie,” a labored adaptation of the Cartoon Network series that gets stuck between trying to satisfy fans and trying to explain everything to the unfamiliar. 

What the movie purports to tell is not as much a story as a back story — how the Powerpuff Girls were created and how they went from freakish outcasts to the saviors and protectors of the city of Townsville. All of this is certainly familiar to the girls’ fan base, if not in such detail, and director and lead writer Craig McCracken could dash off a two-minute prologue to bring the rest of the world up to speed. 

Instead, he decides to build the entire movie around how the Powerpuff Girls got started. It’s a bit like the “Star Wars” prequels in its unnecessary backtracking and obvious destination. 

The girls are the brainchildren of the naive Professor Utonium, who hopes to create the perfect girls out of the prescribed ingredients — sugar, spice and everything nice. But the professor’s lab assistant, a monkey named Jojo, drops “Chemical X” into the mix, giving the girls their superpowers — speed, flight and those fabulous laser eyes. At the same time, Jojo mutates into the evil, super-intelligent Mojo Jojo, the girls’ eventual archnemesis. 

Not knowing what to do with his flock of adorable mutants — bossy Blossom, giddy Bubbles and gruff Buttercup — the professor enrolls them in kindergarten, where all goes well until they’re introduced to the game of tag, which is a lot more fun if you have superpowers. 

In a thrilling if occasionally disquieting sequence, the girls turn themselves loose on Townsville, leaving destruction in their wake. When it’s over, the girls are vilified in the media. (One newspaper headline reads: “Freaky Bug-Eyed Weirdo Girls Broke Everything.”) 

Unfortunately, the movie never reaches this level of hyperkinetic excitement again. Shunned, the girls fall into the clutches of the devious Mojo Jojo, who enlists their unwitting aid in his evil world-domination scheme by insisting that if they help him, the town will embrace them for their powers. 

“The Powerpuff Girls Movie” adheres religiously to the superhero story template — a misfit discovers he has special powers, and after a few blunders learns how to harness them for the greater good. (Of course, these heroes are female, for which McCracken should be applauded, but he follows everything else to the letter.) 

“Spider-Man” has demonstrated anew the potency of this formula, but one would hope for something loonier from such quirky source material. As the plot steamrolls along, there’s no room for whimsical asides or inventive flights of fancy. Even Disney’s animated movies get sidetracked more often than this, and the diversions are usually the good parts. 

It’s a shame, because the girls are delightful, and the movie is skillfully made. Because of the show’s tight production schedule, the animation, drawn in Korea, is stylized but crude; there’s often very little motion in the frame. But the movie makes up for its fast-and-cheap look with aggressive editing, stringing the frames together to create something often spirited and occasionally magical. 

Still, the movie is just not fun enough. “The Powerpuff Girls Movie” lumbers to its conclusion when it should be light on its feet. 

McCracken should follow the lead of the girls, and glide. 

“The Powerpuff Girls Movie,” released by Warner Bros. Pictures, is rated PG for nonstop frenetic animated action. Running time: 87 minutes. Two stars out of four.