Wednesday, November 10, 1999
MOVIE REVIEW
'Pokemon' only for the truly game
BY MARGARET A. McGURK
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Some things you do for your children out of pure love, like taking them in for vaccinations. You may feel you're right back in that doctor's office should your adorable progeny talk you into seeing Pokemon: The First Movie.
(Man oh man, that's a foreboding title. I shudder to think there will be a secondone.)
To be honest, I'm not sure why Kids WB, the Warner Bros. subsidiary behind this movie, bothered to show it to critics at all. The children who avidly trade Pokemon (for “pocket monsters”) cards, watch the TV show and play the video game represent a guaranteed audience for a film, regardless of what anybody says about it.
While the allure of the trading cards is understandable, the movie is flat out inexplicable. The plot, such as it is, involves a Pokemon clone called Mewtwo who resents his human creators so much he destroys them and creates his own army of clones to take over the world with their special powers (electrical charges, bursts of flame, and so forth.)
After apparently identical copies of the same little critters have tried to slap one another into submission, everybody discovers that “fighting is wrong.”
I asked the 11-year-old and 9-year-old who took me to this movie to explain why “fighting is wrong” when the whole purpose of Pokemon is to battle under the direction of their human owners — called “trainers” in the Pokemon universe.
The kids came up with an explanation that was as tortured as the plot of the movie. (Mewtwo made them fight against their will, and “to the death,” which human trainers cannot do.) It was evident the real thrill for these young collectors was less in following a story than in seeing the coveted Pokemon come to life en masse.
Although there are some striking visual moments, most of them involving the dark and dangerous Mewtwo, the movie looks as if it were made in a big hurry.
Overall, the animation is as flat and uninspired as it is in the TV version; even the color looks washed out. Though Pokemon resembles Japanese anime style cartooning, don't let it scare you away from better examples; this is the low end of the genre.
The movie's soundtrack includes a peculiar collection of pop, rock and electronic music with a dash of rap; Cincinnati favorites 98` and Blessid Union of Souls are represented.
The film is showing with a 20-minute short called Pikachu's Vacation that is, to put it mildly, excruciating. It mainly looks like a low-budget experiment by people who spent too much time in the pharmaceutical lab. Worse, it turns what should be a blessedly quick trip into a nearly two-hour ordeal.
Check out Larry Nager's review of the soundtrack at enquirer.com/pokemon
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