Taking a bit of a detour tonight on our ‘Pokemon Movie’ Odyssy, ‘Mewtwo Returns’ was released direct to VHS and DVD in the US and EU as a sequel to ‘Pokemon: The First Movie’ and was even advertised as ‘An All New Movie!’…But the reality is that this was in fact not the case. In Japan, this was a one off extended episode of the Anime that sat between episodes of the regular TV series. It ran to just over an hour or so, and rather than trying to slot this thing into TV listings (something that would not only be a very difficult thing to do given the runtime, but also for the fact that this ‘special’ is a MASSIVE detour from the plot of the Johto arc up to this point…Not to mention that by just putting it straight to TV your effectively just…GIVING it away…) 4Kids decided to cut this out of distribution packages outside of Japan and release it in the west as its own standalone thing.

and while this *Technically* came out BEFORE ‘Pokemon 4Ever’ it didnt feel like enough time had passed between movies for this to really have any kind of significant impact on landing, so I chose to swap them around for viewing purposes to be more dramatic…and before I get into the review, a little side note here but, I hadnt realised until I started rewatching these films just how NEGLECTED ‘Johto’ was when it came to the movies…Donphan appears briefly in ‘The First Movie’ and then it’s Kanto pokemon all the way, We get Lugia and Slowking in ‘Pokemon 2000’ but the main thrust of the plot is the legendary trio Kanto starters and again, its largely Kanto pokemon all the way…Then ‘Pokemon 3’ ACTUALLY bothered to let the film have SOME Johto pokemon in it, but even then its still very Kanto-centric…and then ‘Pokemon 4Ever’ FINALLY makes the franchise FEEL like its ACTUALLY doing a film about ‘Johto’ with ‘Johto’ pokemon and ‘Johto’ locations…and it quickly gets kicked to the curb by this thing, which goes RIGHT on back to being all about Kanto pokemon and very little else.

I wondered if this was a recurring issue with the movies…but NOPE! the next 2-4 films are all set in Hoen and they go ALL IN on Hoen for those movies…like…from the moment it starts…I guess what im saying is that this special/movie kind of acts as the ‘epilogue’ for the Johto movies…and if I had watched this NOT knowing it was supposed to be set in Johto…I’d have assumed they were still in Kanto.

ANYWAY! I’ll put my soapbox aside…’MEWTWO RETURNS!’…and the main question I was left asking was…’Why?!’

And thats because the story for this thing is SO dull…SO damn dull…We open with Ash, Brock and Misty missing the bus for a local tour of a mountainous region. But in many ways they got lucky, because not long after the bus gets onto the trail, a disaster strikes and they fly off the road! BUT! they dont die! because they’re saved by Mewtwo!

It’s revealed that after the end of ‘Pokemon: The Fist Movie’ Mewtwo flew off with all the clone pokemon and wiped everyones memories of the events of that movie. He then relocated all the clone pokemon to Johto, and more specifically ‘Mount Quena’ the largest mountain in Johto with a lake at the center and several densly wooded areas. The lakes and rivers around Mount Quena have powerful restorative powers and Ash, Brock and Misty are invited to sample the waters by a local member of the moutntains tour board. she later reveals herself to be a pokemon professor studying the lakes herself to see if she can find out why the waters are so effective and where the source is coming from.

While all this is going on another two folks arrive at the professors cabin, a fellow professor by the name of Cullen Calex and his assistant ‘Domino’ who are in the region ALSO studying the waters. Everyone seems to be getting on well, until Team Rocket crash into the scene, cause a commotion and end up dragging everyone out of the cabin via a rope attached to their hot air balloon. Simultaineously; ‘Domino’ recognizes the team rocket uniforms and reveals herself to be ‘Agent 009’ a secret agent of Team Rocket working in the area to try and locate ‘Mewtwo’ after tracer signals have been found in the area…Long story short, she locates Mewtwo, alerts Giovanni and the entirity of Team Rocket end up storming Mount Quena…and thats…basically the rest of the movie, Ash and the gang trying to help Mewtwo fend off a Team Rocket invasion, while Mewtwo struggles with the idea of whether humanity should be avoided or spared with mercy…

And…this one kind of sucked if im being honest. The script felt very one note, it was very slow paced, with most of our key characters either walking or being locked up for most of the runtime. Pikachu, Meowth and their clones are pretty much the only pokemon we see outside of the other clones in this, with most of the gangs other pokemon given maybe 1 scene before they’re gone for the rest of the movie. The 3rd act feels like a rerun of the first film, only they pretty much get the ‘fighting is wrong’ message from the first film out of the way in 2 minutes, rather than making it the whole plot of the film, while then focussing on the ‘how do we fix this’ for WAY longer than it needed to.

The three acts are lumpy, inconsistent and I couldnt tell you where each act began or ended. The tones all over the place, it feels like its trying to be stoic in the same way the first film was, but…it’s clearly on a TV anime tone and budget…So they put a lot of forced comedy in there…and even that isnt great. When Team Rocket are key players in the movie and dont even raise a stifled laugh…somethings gone VERY wrong.

The characters all seem a bit underwritten and underplayed. Ash and co are, for the most part, relegated to just shooting out exposition and standing around watching stuff happen. Its actually kind of nuts really, because this is supposed to be one of the first times that Team Rocket as an organisation are shown to be a serious threat and force, AND one of the first times Ash and the crew have to interact with the full force of Team Rocket, and it just…could NOT be more dull, NON of them actually meet, whenever they interact with each other its as people in different rooms talking in monologue format…This should have been the match up to end all match ups! and it flops to the ground with all the weight of a bag of soiled spinach.

The endings also kind of dissatisfying. Its essentially an inverse of the first film…with noone really learning anything significant and Mewtwo just kind of…buggering off to go do something somewhere else. Which is very dissapointing.

Art direction and animation is, in some regards a bit of a win…We dont have rubbish CGI in this one because they couldnt afford to put rubbish CGI in…But at the same time, theres nothing here that really feels grand. It all feels VERY much in line with the TV shows sensibilities (because…it WAS the TV show really…) which, with it being marketed as a film, makes it feel cheap by comparison. Shots are very static, the fluidity i’ve come to expect from the ‘official’ films is missing, and you just end up with a lot of kind of dull, flat sequences because the budget and manpower to do anything more than that just isnt really there.

Performances are pretty much the same as ever. I honestly didnt notice any bad turns…Though im still not 100% on Mewtwo having the voice of Yami/Yugi from Yugioh…

and the soundtrack IS a big upgrade over the usual TV scoring…it feels grander and more orchestral. But because the script is so dull, and the animation so basic and simply structured, it makes it feel like its a bit TOO much, like…imagine some kids making a shot on video film in their back garden, and its scored entirely with royalty free classical music…This special/movie gives that kind of vibe…Which (I assume) is very much not the feeling they wanted to go for…

I remember watching ‘Mewtwo Returns’ when it first came out and kind of being nonplussed by it. But now revisiting it about 23-24 years later. I dont think its aged all that well, its slow, theres nothing particularly interesting or ‘of note’ to keep me hooked, the characters all seem to have been aggressively stripped back so Mewtwo can get a word in, the direction and art style are better than the TV series at this point, but WAY off the quality of the previous films animation, and…Well, the best way to sum it up is as soon as the credits rolled on this one, I just kind of sat back and went ‘…What was the point of this?…Who wanted THIS?!’ Because it sure wasnt me.

Absolutely not essential, and really not that great. If you had a BURNING desire to know what happened to Mewtwo after ‘Pokemon:The First Movie’ I think you kind of missed the point of ‘Pokemon: The First Movie’…but if you DID want to know…this film will tell you in all its yawning and sluggish detail…Its a pass from me.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/pokemon-mewtwo-returns/