‘Pokemon 4Ever’ is the first entry into uncharted waters for me. By the time this film had made it to UK shores it was 2003, I was INCREDIBLY unwell with stress, and Pokemon was probably the furthest thing from my mind. I’d had a pretty intense 6 years with the series, but they took their time between the 3rd movie and this one in coming out, and they kind of missed the boat for me honestly.

This was also the first (of many) Pokemon film(s) to not get a nationwide cinematic release. My memory may be cheating, but I believe it DID get a somewhat limited run (significantly less cinemas, with significantly less showings) so it DID do a BIT better than some of the latter day offerings…But yeh, this one shuffled half heartedly out onto VHS and DVD in October of 2003, which was the main way most people watched it…and, its kind of a shame really because, to the films credit…While I didnt love it, it is almost certainly better than most of whats come before it.

The film opens with a wild Celebi (a legendary Pokemon from the Johto era) being persued by a Pokemon Hunter that wants to capture it to sell to the highest bidder at auction. Celebi is saved by a random passer by called ‘Sammy’ who fends off the hunter, and; with a moment to spare, Celebi uses its ancient powers to time travel itself and Sammy 40 years into the future.

Injured and weak from using almost all of its energy, Sammy and Celebi collapse near a shrine, where they’re found by our fateful heros Ash, Misty and Brock. on bringing Sammy back to the nearest rest stop, an elderly woman who’s been patrolling the forests for years protecting the woodland and its Pokemon recognises the lad as the one who mysteriously dissapeared some 40 years prior.

Its here that we’re also introduced to our antagonist for this movie the ‘Iron Masked Maurauder’ a devious and infamous ‘special’ member of team rocket who has perfected the use of ‘Dark Balls’, a pokeball variation that turns any captured pokemon evil. He’s on the hunt for Celebi and after tracking down the hunter from 40 years prior (who is now an old man) discovers the likely location of Celebi. The Maurauders plan? To capture Celebi in a dark ball and use its immense psychic powers to show Team Rockets leader Giovanni, that he’s worthy of a senior positition within Team Rocket. He then leaves, but not before deomonstrating the power of the ‘Dark Ball’ capturing a caged Tyranitar and turning it into a Hyper Beam weilding monster.

While on the way to the woods our goofy plain old REGULAR Team Rocket, meet up with the Maurauder and decide to tag along to act as ‘back up’ (see here: titting about, comedy hijynx and causing the maurauder more problems than solving them).

While this is going on, the gang take the weakened Celebi back into the woods, where various Pokemon lead the gang to the ‘Lake of Life’ a hidden area of the woods with regenerative waters. They dunk Celebi in and hey presto, he’s fully healed and bopping about like a good’un.

But when the Maurauder turns up and spots the gang and Celebi, it becomes a battle of might vs kindness, as Ash and Sammy team up to try and shield Celebi and the Maurauder threatens not only the destruction of the lake, but of the entire forest too!

Given this was direct to video in my neck of the woods, and that after the 3rd film, there seemed to be a significant drop in interest in the other Pokemon movies, I kind of went into this one fully expecting it to be D.O.A…But I actually have to say, I came away from this one somewhat surprised really.

I’ll get probably my biggest sticking point out of the way up front, the plot for this one just…isnt really particularly exciting. Given the previous 3 films revolved around a clone pokemon trying to raise a clone army to take over the world, a billionair tech fascist trying to capture a sea god for his ‘collection’, and a plot involving a little girl getting infinite reality bending powers leading to surreal and interesting subplots…the story of a little green onion zapping a kid 40 years into the future. passing out for 15 minutes of the runtime, getting better, and then a couple of moderately ‘timey wimey’ plot twists that I wont mention here for spoilers sake…Before heading back to its original timeline 40 years in the past, is…kind of underwhelming.

Im not saying that there arnt elements of this that are exciting, the final act showdown between Ash and Sammy, and the Maurauder and Celebi is very well handled. But it shares a lot of its plot points from ‘Pokemon – The Movie: 2000’ to an almost 1:1 degree…with the only significant difference being that one of the villains was a ‘collector’ stealing pokemon for himself, and the other was a ‘Hunter’ stealing pokemon for someone elses collection…

In many ways, I prefer this film to ‘2000’ because it at least picks a lane, ‘2000’s’ problem was it had to juggle the legendary birds plot, the ‘orb’ sub plot AND the collector and Lugia plot lines all at once. This? is massively streamlined with the Celebi/Maurauder plot taking center stage, with a slightly more vague subplot about the mythical dog ‘Suicune’ helping add a bit of a contrast. My issue is that these plots both are struggling for my attention.

The main plot, as mentioned just isnt intense enough to make me feel like im watching something special, this could have just been a 2 part story in the Anime, and it would have been okay at that. Its a bit too gentle and they slow the action RIGHT down in the 2nd act for a big chunk of the runtime where I feel maybe another brief subplot or even some more character development for Sammy or the protectors of the forest would have been nice. They dont even really play all that much on the ‘Time Travel’ element of the plot really, which seems bizarre given its being marketed as the core USP of this film…

The Suicune subplot is almost non existent. We get a VERY brief intro to Suicune as a core concept in the opening 15 minutes of the film, but it literally only occupies about 3-4 minutes of that opening, and then we dont really pick it back up again till the opening of the 3rd act…and even THEN, when we DO pick it up, Suicune essentially swishes in, runs around a bit, does ONE key action near the very end of the film, and then buggers off, its less a storyline, and more a ‘we wrote ourselves into a corner and need a ‘maguffin’ to get us out’ type situation…Which I was a little dissapointed with honestly.

The characters here are all fine enough, I do wish they’d given Sammy as a character a bit more of a chance to grow and develop, he seems largerly relegated to the background for a good chunk of this film past the opening, which made me wonder why they put him in the movie at all (a later plot twist involving him was nice…But I wouldnt say it was essential, and it opesn a LOT of questions about the anime and the storyline we’ve been following up to this point) I was equally dissapointed that, once again, we find both Team Rocket AND Misty and Brock just kind of…mooching about in the background for most of the runtime, with only a handful of moments where they actually seem to get anything to do. Its a particular shame with Team Rocket, whos goofy self awareness is pretty much the main highlight of any of these movies.

The Maurauder is probably one of the more interesting villains to come out of the series up to this point, and im kind of amazed that he was just a one off who only appeared in this movie and never showed up again, as I could have easily seen him popping up a few more times (maybe in the anime) as a mid league threat to the gang. I guess im just kind of amazed the burnt through a decent character for just one movie…

As for the pacing and structuring? The first act opens relatively strong, the second act maintains the pace, but quickly starts losing momentum around the halfway point, eventurally resulting in just…time killing scenes that dont really seem to be going anywhere, and ultimately lead into a 3rd act that feels like its positively pedestrian barring the final fight scene. I dunno, I feel like when your movies ‘Final Fight’ scene is treated almost like an interruption to the narcolepsy framing it…you have a bit of a problem on your hands. Pacings a bit up and down, better than some of the earlier entries…But not great.

On the art direction and animation front, it feels a bit like a step back, while the hand drawn animation is still much in line with the quality we had for ‘Pokemon The Movie: 3’ which I thought was a high water mark for the series honestly, the CGI seems to have backslidden back into ‘Pokemon 2000’ terratory. In the last film, the CG was still kind of prominent, but was a LOT more subtle than in ‘2000’, but here, we have large swathes of the movie featuring VERY noticable and intense ‘PS3 era’ CG graphics, they stand out like a sore thumb and really break up the flow of the animation and scene structuring. I really wasnt a fan honestly, and im hoping in later entries either the graphics will improve, or become more subtle.

Other than that, the animation itself is pretty lovely, there are some really nice moments bought to life here (a scene involving a mass evolution of Metapod into Butterfree is a definite highlight) sequences are largely well paced and look great! With only one or two scenes really standing out as being on screen for a bit too long, or moments being drawn out just a little bit past the comfortable zone.

Vocal performances are once again, fine. I dont quite feel like the same level of passion is here for this one, and Brock sounds QUITE different form the last time he was on screen. But the cast do a fine enough job and just about get through the whole thing in one piece.

The soundtrack here too feels a little bit cheaper. its essentially slightly jazzed up reimaginings of tracks from the anime for the most part, with a couple of low level pop songs randomly slotted in. this is probably the most unmemorable soundtrack of the series thus far. I wasnt particularly a fan.

I can absolutely understand why ‘Pokemon 4Ever’ didnt get a wide cinema release when it came out. It just doesnt seem to have the same level of pull as the previous films, and given the high stakes of the last few entries, this seems more like an extended episode of the TV series than anything else, but not in a good way.

Nevertheless; while I have been critical of this movie, it does have its good points, the plot itself while slower, is probably more cohesive and understandable than any of the previous 3 movies plotlines, the pacing is more consistent, the act structuring is reletively solid and the cast are interesting. Throw in a couple of half decent plot twists and ‘Pokemon 4Ever’ is almost certainly not one that I think kids today would like…Honestly, I think most adults would struggle. But on a technical and thematic level, its still moving in the right direction. I dont think i’d go as far as to say this is ‘underrated’, but I’d say if you are revisiting the early Pokemon movies, it *may well* be worth your time to maybe take just one more step out of the original trilogy.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/pokemon-4ever/