Sure, the decidedly low-tech, on-the-cheap animation makes Saturday-morning TV fare look rich and sophisticated by comparison, the storytelling is awkward and laughably arch and the tone is all over the place, but thanks to its brilliantly timed release, " Pokemon the First Movie" will handily buck the boxoffice fate of most non-Disney animated features, riding the mighty wave of Pokemania all the way to the bank for Warner Bros.
Most big-screen attempts at cashing in on a craze seem to arrive on the scene a year too late. And while this picture may have the look and feel of a rush job, that won't matter to the legions of card-trading, game-playing youngsters who have made Pokemon the sixth most-searched-for word on the Internet.
The Japanese production, which could have just as easily been called "Nintendo the Motion Picture", has been rescripted and rescored for American consumption and is packaged with a 20-minute short that serves as something of a primer for those who don't know Pikachu from peekaboo.
But while the sweetly benign "Pikachu's Vacation" seems to be targeted to "Pokemon"'s younger fans, the tone abruptly becomes much darker for the main event.
It begins with a confusing prologue in which strands of DNA from the legendary Mew have been bioengineered by scientists into a more powerful clone known as Mewtwo. Annoyed that he has been turned into a Pokemon equivalent of Frankenstein's monster, Mewtwo swears vengeance on mankind.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Ash Ketchum and his fellow Pokemon trainers Misty and Brock are summoned, by mysterious invitation, along with their pocket monsters to New Island, where Mewtwo has orchestrated a fight-to-the-finish showdown against his newly cloned versions in his bid to become the World's Greatest Pokemon Master on his way to total global domination.
Adults may cringe at the preachy heavy-handedness and the extremely limited motion animation that sets the art form back a couple of generations, but youngsters will no doubt delight in seeing their beloved collectibles and Game Boy characters come to life (well, sort of) up on the movie screen.
On the musical front, aside from the zippy Pokemon theme song, which conjures up memories of the old "Solid Gold" theme sans the gold spandex, the Ralph Schuckett-John Loeffler score has been augmented with a CD's worth of kid-pleasing pop by the likes of Christina Aguilera, Blessid Union of Souls and erstwhile Spice Girl Emma Bunton, who knows a thing or two about the fleeting nature of pop-culture phenomena.
POKEMON THE FIRST MOVIE
Warner Bros.
Kids' WB! presents
a 4Kids Entertainment production
Director: Kunihiko Yuyama
Producer: Norman J. Grossfeld
Producers: Choji Yoshikawa, Tomoyuki Igarashi, Takemoto Mori
English adaptation directed by: Michael Haigney
Screenwriter: Takeshi Shudo
English adaptation written by: Norman J. Grossfeld, Michael Haigney, John Touhey
Director of photography: Hisao Shirai
Art director: Katsuyoshi Kanemura
Editor: Toshio Henmi
Music: Ralph Schuckett, John Loeffler
Color/stereo
Voices:
Veronica Taylor, Philip Bartlett, Rachael Lillis, Eric Stuart, Addie Blaustein, Ikue Otani.
Running time -- 95 minutes
MPAA rating: G...
Most big-screen attempts at cashing in on a craze seem to arrive on the scene a year too late. And while this picture may have the look and feel of a rush job, that won't matter to the legions of card-trading, game-playing youngsters who have made Pokemon the sixth most-searched-for word on the Internet.
The Japanese production, which could have just as easily been called "Nintendo the Motion Picture", has been rescripted and rescored for American consumption and is packaged with a 20-minute short that serves as something of a primer for those who don't know Pikachu from peekaboo.
But while the sweetly benign "Pikachu's Vacation" seems to be targeted to "Pokemon"'s younger fans, the tone abruptly becomes much darker for the main event.
It begins with a confusing prologue in which strands of DNA from the legendary Mew have been bioengineered by scientists into a more powerful clone known as Mewtwo. Annoyed that he has been turned into a Pokemon equivalent of Frankenstein's monster, Mewtwo swears vengeance on mankind.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Ash Ketchum and his fellow Pokemon trainers Misty and Brock are summoned, by mysterious invitation, along with their pocket monsters to New Island, where Mewtwo has orchestrated a fight-to-the-finish showdown against his newly cloned versions in his bid to become the World's Greatest Pokemon Master on his way to total global domination.
Adults may cringe at the preachy heavy-handedness and the extremely limited motion animation that sets the art form back a couple of generations, but youngsters will no doubt delight in seeing their beloved collectibles and Game Boy characters come to life (well, sort of) up on the movie screen.
On the musical front, aside from the zippy Pokemon theme song, which conjures up memories of the old "Solid Gold" theme sans the gold spandex, the Ralph Schuckett-John Loeffler score has been augmented with a CD's worth of kid-pleasing pop by the likes of Christina Aguilera, Blessid Union of Souls and erstwhile Spice Girl Emma Bunton, who knows a thing or two about the fleeting nature of pop-culture phenomena.
POKEMON THE FIRST MOVIE
Warner Bros.
Kids' WB! presents
a 4Kids Entertainment production
Director: Kunihiko Yuyama
Producer: Norman J. Grossfeld
Producers: Choji Yoshikawa, Tomoyuki Igarashi, Takemoto Mori
English adaptation directed by: Michael Haigney
Screenwriter: Takeshi Shudo
English adaptation written by: Norman J. Grossfeld, Michael Haigney, John Touhey
Director of photography: Hisao Shirai
Art director: Katsuyoshi Kanemura
Editor: Toshio Henmi
Music: Ralph Schuckett, John Loeffler
Color/stereo
Voices:
Veronica Taylor, Philip Bartlett, Rachael Lillis, Eric Stuart, Addie Blaustein, Ikue Otani.
Running time -- 95 minutes
MPAA rating: G...
- 11/10/1999
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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