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| Pokémon: The First Movie Mewtwo Strikes Back |
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| Movies,
Graham Bower,
20 January 1999 |
Rating: F3
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They're cute, they're Japanese, there's 150 of them, and they're everywhere. By now you surely must have heard of Pokémon - they're the next big thing, and boy, they're even bigger than the last big thing. The Pokémon phenomena has kids battling in the playgrounds for the most valuable trading cards, and parents battling in the Toys R Us for the last action figure. You see, any parents who fails to produce a Pokémon gift under the tree this Yule will have screaming kids on their hands.
"Pokémon: The First Movie" comes from an illustrious tradition in movie making, known as the "Japanese Toy Tie-In" which includes "Transformers: The Movie" and, less successfully "The Care Bears Movie". Perhaps suprisingly, these movies can sometimes come up trumps. Transformers: The Movie featured the voice talent of the late Orson Wells, and Care Bears... well OK, Care Bears was crap.
The TV show, currently showing on Sky One in the UK, is a beautifully conceived show. A unique combination of camp irony and cute creatures, the show seamlessly dovetails in to Nintendo's compulsive Gameboy game. What's so perfect about the show is how it mirrors the gameplay, and visa-versa. If only the movie had done the same.
Naturally, the makers of Pokémon: The First Movie wanted a bigger theme for the movie, but maybe they bit of more than they could chew with the dark and nihilistic exploration of the meaning of life at which they arrive. While the theme is ambitious, the story is simple and single minded. Suprisingly, there isn't much pokémon fighting (the main action in the game & TV show). There is a big monster mash at the end, but the action is unstructured and the pokémon are pitted against clones of themselves rather than fighting each other, which doesn't make for well matched battles.
Sadly, we're not treated to much of Team Rocket, the delightfully camp baddies - they don't even get to recite their motto as they do every morning on the TV show. They do, however, get the chance to shout out "who's that Pokémon" when a sihouette of Meaowth appears on a screen - a nice in joke you'll only get if you've seen the break-bumpers on the Sky One version (they don't show this on ITV).
Look out for the twenty minute mini movie before the main feature, entitled "Pikachu's Vacation" - it's arguably the most entertaining part of the show.
Fans of cute Japanese Animé will enjoy the animation, it's just a shame there wasn't more of a story, and some better fight sequences. Who knows, maybe the inevitable "Pokémon: The Second Movie" will be less disappointing.
UK rating:
U
US rating:
U
Kunihiko Yuyama1999, Japan
Veronica Taylor , Rachel Lillis , Eric Stuart , Ikue Ootani and Philip Bartlett
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