It really cannot be overstated just HOW impactful the world of ‘Pokemon’ was to a particular generation of 90s kid. It was essentially that eras ‘Beatlemania’. And between the trading cards, the video game series and the anime. You’d be hard pressed to find someone who grew up in that decade who DIDNT at one point know the entire ‘Pokerap’ off by heart. I guess what im trying to say is that, for a brief window between 1997 and 2001, Pokemon was essentially a global movement. So when they announced that they were releasing a feature length pokemon movie DIRECTLY into theaters (AND that by attending these screenings or by buying the home video release, you’d snag yourself some pretty ‘choice’ promo pokemon cards to boot!) You better believe that things got…somewhat chaotic to say the least.

I remember quite vividly when this film hit my local cinema chains, they essentially dedicated half the cinema screens to JUST playing the pokemon movie, from opening to closing, concurrently at times, and even then they basically sold out every single showing for its entire theatrical run AND they ran out of the promotional card allocations within the first 3 days…it was supposed to last the entire theatrical run.

I never saw this film in theaters, purely because there literally wasnt a free seat in the house, and I think my parents could absolutely think of better ways to spend their saturday/sunday than taking an ADHD addled hyperactive pokemon megafan to stand in a queue for up to an hour to be told that there were no screens available…and god FORBID there was a screen available, as they then would have been subjected to 95 minutes of something they didnt really like or understand, crammed in tight with 150+ other screaming hyperactive children, for whome this moment was likely the closest they have and ever will come to a religeous experience.

My folks DID however race for the opportunity to pick this up as soon as it became available in video rental stores. and we managed to nab a copy on the day it first hit home video. We literally had a party, me and a few friends gathered around a tiny 20 inch set fully embraced in…well, I dont think we were actually paying attention to the story. We were all just in awe that we were getting to see MEWTWO, the STRONGEST pokemon ever seen up to this point (praise arceus) kick ass and blow stuff up. That was my long standing memory of this film, watching Mewtwo beat the ever loving crap out of everything, and one scene where two psyducks slap each other and act confused…which me and my friends then replicated for about an hour, until my parents split us up and told us if we kept doing it, the party would be off.

I have incredibly warm memories of that time…and as soon as the film came to VHS and DVD in a retail capacity, my parents grabbed it for me and I pretty much played it to death…and then I discovered my love for women and Pokemon pretty much fell of a cliff face for the better part of 10 years or so…

Well! In 2015, MANGA (the UK’s mainline Anime distribution company) announced they were releasing the first 3 pokemon movies, for the first time in HD in a rather attractive steelbook set. The price was decent, and I hadnt seen the films at this point for about 14 years…So I decided to nab them, especially considering MANGA have a nasty habit of discontinuing their stock without telling people, and then watching the price spiral into triple or occasionally quadruple digits.

And then that steelbook basically sat on my ‘to watch’ pile (barring a one off screening of this film in 2016) until today…and that one off screening in 2016, It was on my birthday and I had done a LOT of shots…so it was really quite a blur…In essence what im trying to say is that I likely havent sat down and watched this film sober and with focus in about 24 years. But I recently made the decision to revisit the pokemon movies, as I only ever saw the first 3…and theres over 20 of the gits now. So I figured it might be fun to see if they still held up. This one? does not.

Honestly, for all the lead up I’ve made for this review, I have very little to say about this film. The plots pretty straightforward, it essentially plays out like an extended, slightly bigger budgeted episode of the anime, taking our heros (Ash, Brock, Misty and Pikachu) away from their current mission of taking on the pokemon league in Kanto (I believe this is set somewhere around the end of the Kanto arc, after Blaine, but before Giovanni really comes onto the scene) And our heros are having a bit of a rest. When out of nowhere they recieve a mysterious invitation to take part in a new championship being held by a self proclaimed ‘Pokemon Master’.

This ‘Master’ is non other than ‘Mewtwo’ the second manmade pokemon (after Porygon) and a clone of the, thought extinct, legendary pokemon ‘Mew’. Mewtwo was created in a lab and almost immediately he realises that the scientists who made him were more interested in proving the concept that pokemon can be created by man, than they were forming a bond and partnership with this living, breathing, sentient being who can speak fluent english via telepathy.

So; Mewtwo nukes the lab using is EXTROADINARY psychic abilities and flees. Eventually Giovanni (a jackenapes who is the leader of the inafamous ‘Team Rocket’) catches up with Mewtwo and offers him a partnership, as equals. Praying on Mewtwos ‘want’ to be accepted as an equal. He accepts and Giovanni immediately sets to work. Buidling Mewtwo a set of power channelling armour that allows him to concentrate and focus his immense psychic abilites. What mewtwo doesnt realise is that the ‘training’ Giovanni is putting him through, is actually just a series of heists and challenges, enabling team rocket to mass capture pokemon and seize assets.

Eventually Hubris gets the better of Giovanni who reveals directly to Mewtwo that he’s basically just been using him to bulk steal pokemon and wealth from people…which, as you can imagine goes down well (why would you even try to piss off the pokemon who could tear your body apart on a neuron level as easily as I bite through candy floss?!)

Mewtwo nukes Giovannis hideout leaving most of team rocket for dead, before returning to the island of his origin to set up his ‘master plan’.

Ash and the gang arrive at the island to find that Mewtwo has constructed a MASSIVE base, and, having kidnapped the regions local ‘Nurse Joy’ he’s used her knowledge of technology and pokemon physiology to construct a monstrocity of a machine aimed at building a clone army of genetically enhanced pokemon to do his bidding, his mission? to eradicate all human life, liberate pokemon from their trainers and create a pokemon utopia…Leaving it down to Ash, Misty, Brock and Pikachu to prove to Mewtwo that pokemon arnt subservient to their trainers, and that the bond and friendship between them is what unites them.

And probably the biggest problem this film has is simply that its just WAY too heavy handed in its messaging, to the point that it actually ends up raising some controversial issues in the process.

What the film is TRYING to say is best summed up by Mewtwo himself. That ‘The Circumstances of ones birth are irrelevant. It is what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are.’ Which is a good, wholesome message. However, Pokemon itself as a franchise is littered with examples of instances where the relationship between pokemon and their owners could amount to modern day slavery, and this film tries its DAMNDEST to play it off that in this world? the pokemon are TOTALLY okay with a bit of enslavement. Hell, even in this movie one of the characters scoffs at the idea that a pokemon could be a pokemon trainer. a point that NON of the other trainers really challenge.

It just feels a bit insincere on your first feature length outing to try and run with, what is essentially an anti bullying, anti racist messaging, when Pokemon as a series has MULTIPLE instances of discrimination and what at BEST could be considered gaslighting.

This wouldnt be SO bad, if it wasnt for the fact they push this message SO hard in such a narrow window of time. essentially, the message comes out of nowhere about 15 minutes off the end of the film. and then for that final 15 minutes its LITERALLY all they talk about, they *just* about stop short of directly addressing the audience to say ‘racism and bullying are bad m’kay.’ I know with kids you do have to be a little more simplistic and direct. But even so, this is almost to the point of patronizing.

Beyond that? it’s just kind of dull, really more a series of setpieces that they hadnt been able to find a way to insert into the anime series. Its literally like they just sat in an office during the pitch session and were like ‘Hey…we’ve never seen 2 Charizard have a flying battle to the death…lets put that in movie…Hey! we have this new season of the anime set in Johto coming out next year…lets put a pokemon from THAT series into this film and freak audiences out! HEY! lets give pikachu an evil doppelganger…AND we’ll make pikachu get trapped in a pokeball as an emotional scene, because he hates being in a pokeball!’

Thats all this movie is really, a vague plot around loving one another, glued together with about a dozen set pieces that dont really do anything for the plot, they just feel like they were scenes they either could do justice too on the animes budget, or they couldnt figure out HOW it would fit into the anime…and it gets repetative and dull…FAST.

Clocking in at 74 minutes long (104 minutes if you include the short film ‘Pikachus Vacation’ which played at the opening of all theatrical and home video screenings) It somehow feels painfully slow and dragged out. the pacing is WAY too stop start and the fight sequences, while cool from a pokemon fan standpoint. Go on for WAY too long and ultimatley dont really mean anything. The characters go to painful lengths to explain every single detail of whats being shown on screen. to the point that you could probably just have this as a radio play and it would work just as well…

The act structurings a bit botched too, its, for the most part a linear story, but they do flash back and forth a bit here and there. The first act (up to the point where the gang arrive on Mewtwos island) is fine. it feels like a pretty good episode of the anime…But the SECOND they set foot on that island, the film falls into a muddled 2nd act, where it doesnt really know what to do with itself. It starts repeating itself on plot points, throwing set pieces around with no rhyme or reason.

Its a real mess, and it drags out WELL into the point where the 3rd act should have begun, leaving the 3rd act about 15 minutes to not only resolve the story, but to try and wrap things up successfully…

Something I feel it fails to do as (mild spoilers for a 27 year old movie) they resolve *some* they are kind of bound to NOT drastically alter anything, because that would mess with the animes run…So they have Mew use its…magic?…I guess…to factory reset the entire film at the end. with only Mew and Mewtwo having any memory that this adventure ever happened. Mewtwo then flies off to be ‘the protector of pokemon’…Even for a kids film, making the last hour or so no better than ‘It was all a dream!’ is a pretty poor show…

Mercifully, from here on in things do pick up. The direction and art style IS a distinct upgrade from the TV’s anime style, it feels a lot more fluid and the extra screen space allows for grander, richer, more detailed depictions that I imagine must have looked incredible on the screen back in the 90s. I mentioned it feels like an extended episode of the anime, but with a bigger budget and more attention to detail and that really is the best way to sum it up. there are a few continuity errors I spotted here and there (probably the most agregious being Team rocket mislabelling a Scyther as an Alakazam) but these things do happen from time to time. It looks pretty solid honestly. With my only hangup really being that the CGI featured in this film REALLY has not aged well (seriously, it all looks like PS2 era graphics) and its SUCH. a contrast to the hand drawn animation, that to my 2025 eyes. its BEYOND distracting.

The animation itself is fluid and really showcases what could be achieved with Pokemon as a franchise with a good cash injection. On that side of things there isnt really much I can honestly complain about, its probably the best the series had looked up to that point, and later films only build on that.

On the performance front, I watched it dubbed, and it was nice to see the original Voice actors from the series in a film environment, Veronica Taylor specifically really ups her game here in voicing Ash, giving him some really nice and more complex tones and deliveries when compared to what was on offer in the TV series. they’re all pretty solid, I dont have much more to say than that. Jay Goede is a newcomer here as the voice of Mewtwo, bringing a slight ‘Orson Welles’ twang to the character, which I think was a really nice choice. Yeh…no issues from me really on the performance front.

And the soundtrack is…odd. But kind of emblematic of the era? the remixed take on the main pokemon theme is frankly incredible and still holds up, but then contrasting some genuinely nice original compositions that feel VERY much in step with the anime up to that point…you have 3-5 tracks that are VERY prominent in the film that are essentially just 90s pop songs…and a chunk of them are ballads at that…its weird…like imagine if ‘Akira’ had a celine dion song just crammed into the 2nd act at random? Thats kind of what we’re dealing with here. Like…I didnt HATE any of the song in this…But it did just make me wonder ‘WHY’ is that there?…

Pokemon: The First movie, as a first attempt at GETTING pokemon onto the silver screen? is fine. Not great! I probably wouldnt even go as far as to say its ‘good!’ Its too inconsistent and heavy handed with its messaging for me to really get on with it. But it has enough okay moments for me that stop it from being objectively bad, and that combined with some striking and pleasent visuals, some solid performances and a decent score are *just* enough to pull this thing back from the abyss.

I dont know if kids today would enjoy this, in fact, im kind of confident they probably wouldnt. its too slow burn and weird. Kids have ipads and HD graphic video games burning a hole in their souls these days, So anything slowburn that doesnt just get to the point immediately and then shut off is kind of a moot point for them.

I guess what im trying to say is, if your an elder millenial and your thinking of showing your kids what YOU grew up with in terms of film and cinema. You may be about to get a rude awakening when they waddle off to go play with an electrical outlet before Dragonite even turns up here…and IF you’re an elder millenial and you’ve decided to revisit this one after a long LONG time…be prepared to come to the shocking realisation that this film, while it may have been the greatest thing you’d ever seen aged 11…has NOT aged well, and is in fact a bit crappy in places…But thats okay, it does have good moments, and…if my memories of watching these holds up, the next couple of films DO learn from the mistakes of this one.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/pokemon-the-first-movie/