Ohhh this one effected me in profound and unpleasent ways. I had first heard of ‘Goodbye Uncle Tom’ from a friend ‘G.G Graham’ many years ago as one of the most distasteful ‘mondo’ entries ever put to film. Naturally, this peaked my curiosity and a year or so back, Blue Underground put the DVD on sale ahead of a 4k re-release. it was literally a couple of bucks. So I figured it was worth a punt…I wasnt fully prepared for what lay ahead.

Theres no real way to dress this film up. The plot revolves around two itallian journalists who, via the power of a helecopter, manage to time travel back to the peak of the slave trade in the American South. and what follows is essentially two journalists from the 70s interviewing and investigating the slave trade in all its facets. they follow the slavers who captured black people in Africa and drove them to American shores by boat, they follow the processors who transfer the slaves from boats to camps for examination, decontamination and eventual branding and sales, and from there we follow the many different ‘professions’ that slaves could be sold into, from Cotton picking, to brothel work, to helping process and control other slaves.

And when I say ‘they investigate the slave trade’ this isnt a light touch overview of slavery in America. What is shown here in unflinching detail is the absolute worst abhorrences to occur during the time of Slavery in America. From slaves having their teeth chipped off so they could be force fed food to stop them starving themselves to death, to Slaves being castrated to stop them from reproducing, to the horrors of masters removing limbs of their slaves to stop them doing things they dont want them to do, to the horrific sights of a Slave ‘breeding’ camp where 13 year old virgins are basically thrown to ‘studs’ for mating purposes.

They do not miss a single second of showing the absolute horrors of this time period, and the horrendous people who enabled it. And while there is some arguement that what is shown here is dramatized somewhat for shock, its NOT disputed that these events DID happen and WERE fairly commonplace. Put it this way, this film *could* and HAS been used to teach about the slave trade in schools, its only flaw in accuracy is that it seems to show the absolute worst elements of the trade almost as a supercut, when in reality incidents like this (while common) wernt an every day occurance.

So you’d think an unflinching documentary about the slave trade would be a must see, especially in a time when immigration is such a hot button issue, you’d think progressives would be lining up round the block to promote this film as something folks need to see to understand why we cant go back to the days of ‘funny farms’, ‘concentration camps’ and ‘slavery’…But…there in lies my complex feelings about this film.

Because the director and writer for the film were both kind of racist. The entire reason they made this film was because, at this point in the 70s, the Black Panther movement had just gotten into full swing and there had been a spate of attacks on white people by Black people who had had enough of white supremacists and wanted equality and reparation for the enslavements.

That motivation taints this film quite considerably. With several moments of clearly racist stereotyping such as the appearence of sterotypical racist charicatures of ‘Mammy’ and ‘Uncle Tom’ figures at multiple points in the film, an ending, which implies that Black people are being indoctrinated into believing all white people are evil, and its only a matter of time before they strike, and probably the most unforgivable element of this film (and that is saying something!) The fact that the entire black cast for this film (we are talking HUNDREDS of people) were made up of impoverished Hatians who were paid basically no money to be stripped naked, corraled and faux tortured on camera for 99% of the films runtime. The choice being to let the film makers terrorize them for barely enough money for a meal a day (or less) or they die of poverty on a roadside somewhere. They used these peoples kids in this film, some of them were literal newborn babies… for a significant portion of the runtime.

And that for me, is where the complexity of this film lies, Arguably one of the most unflinching and faithful depictions of the slave trade in the 19th century…made, by an enslaved cast of non actors…forced into the job by racists, with the alternative being almost certain death. I can only really voice my feelings on this, but It could have been the greatest film ever made, and that wouldnt have justified the actions of the film makers here. Its sick. Sick in the kind of way that leaves a mental scar in not only myself, but many other people who I know have seen this.

And…I dont really know how to ratify theses two points honestly…Part of me thinks that, similar to my opinions on ‘Cannibal Holocaust’, you cant really undo or take back the damage that was done by making this film the way it was made. So you might as well try to use it as a tool for good in the world BY showing it, in context, as part of discussions about the slave trade. However, part of me also feels that by in talking about or showing this film at all, your re-enabling the suffering not only of the people who were forced into BEING in this film, but disrespecting the memories of so many people who died in the slave trade, who almost certainly wouldnt have wanted to have seen the harsh legacy their cruel involvers depicted by folks who were forced into taking part…

I feel like the ethics and morals of this production are pretty clean cut as abhorrent, but whether IT as a work should be praised or derided, I feel is a step above my paygrade and more the field for philosophy and ethics students, rather than me, a goofy guy on the internet who likes talking about the art behind movies.

What I can do, is speak about this film from an artistic standpoint. And my opinion is that, this film ACTUALLY made me feel something, it made me feel sick, it made me feel uncomfortable. Since watching it, its already sparked at least a couple of healthy discussions with my peers. Its a technically incredible work with creative direction, an interesting method of bringing this world alive and some quite beautiful and quite sickening cinematography and scoring choices. I can find the work Abhorrent, I can find it mezmorising as a piece, But I cant deny that, as a work? It is ‘art’ it moved me, and changed my perception of that period of time quite distinctly.

This is probably one of the most mean spirited and unpleasent films i’ve ever seen, but at the same time, the film makers feelings are laid bare for the audience to process, their views may be wrong, but I almost feel like it needed a racist to make a film about racism in this instance, someone who wasnt likely to wilt away from the atrocities that took place during this time, and someone who felt comfortable being immersed in racist language and ways of thinking. I 100% disagree with there final scene ‘assessment’ of the current state of play. And I find that final 10 minute shift in the narrative to be jarring and against the rest of the movie. But I think they handled this topic in a way that had never, and likely WILL never be handled this way again.

My final thoughts? I think people should at least try to experience this film at least once. I think it should have a more academic reputation than it currently does have, I think knowing its context is important going into the film as it definitely alters the perception of what the film is trying to present. Like ‘I spit on your Grave’, ‘Salo’ and ‘Cannibal Holocaust’ this film is a sharp shock to the system, but its so much more than the shock it presents. and I feel taking this film on at the level it wants you to engage with it on, rather than immediately dismissing it as disgusting schlock that should have been banned. Is probably the best way to take this film on.

I’d suggest a group setting so discussions can be had. But, if you can find ANYONE willing to share a viewing space with you while this films playing…well…please let me know in the comments how that worked out.

I dont regret watching this…I just didnt quite know what I was getting into…

Edit – I should add, if you are interested in an explanation of this film from a more historical standing, the below link may be of interest.

jimcrowmuseum.ferris.edu/question/2010/august.htm

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/goodbye-uncle-tom/

Its been a little while since I treated myself to another slice of ‘Camp Blood’ Honestly after the borderline unwatchable double offering from Dustin Ferguson that preceeds this entry, im kind of amazed I came back for more. But! There about another 10 of these to go, and I got curious…So here we are.

‘Camp Blood 666’ is once again, another ground up reboot of the franchise. At this point, im not sure whether they’re even considering the original film to be canon anymore, or if this is just a completely clean restart. All I know is, they’ve AT LEAST airlocked everything from ‘Camp Blood 2’ onwards. As far as this film is concerned, the first film *might* have happened, but its been a good 10 or so years (at least) since theres been any documented murders at ‘Camp Blood’

Our film this time centers around ‘Betsy’ and her boyfriend ‘Tom’. When Betsy’s dad calls her in the early hours of the morning, concerned that his son (Betsys brother) hasnt returned from a night out, he becomes increasingly concerned that he’s fallen in with a bad crowd. He tells Betsy that he knows hes been spending a lot of time up at ‘Camp Blackwood’ recently, and that (according to the news) theres been a lot of ‘cult’ stuff going on up there…SATANIC ‘cult’ stuff…

Betsy recognises the name almost immediately as ‘Camp Blood’ is infamous as the scene of a mass murder of high school teens many MANY years ago (1999). So she agrees to at least *try* to head over to ‘Camp Blood’ to see if she can find any clues to her Brothers dissapearence.

She heads over to her boyfriend Toms house, and after filling him in on whats happened, the pair head up to the woods and start searching, while up there they find a concrete bunker filled with severed limbs, clothes and blood EVERYWHERE. they take a bloodied shirt and decide to head out, but bump into a forest ranger, who tells them to stop pulling pranks. he wont believe them, so the pair decide to go to the towns sheriffs office, where HE’S super dismissive of them, but out of earshot, he arranges for an officer to be stations up at the woods.

While this is going on, this universes take on the clown killer (a possessed cultist…thats not a spoiler either, they make it clear in the opening 5 minutes that this version of the ‘Clown Killer’ is a former mass murderer called Stan Cunningham who can be ressurected to possses a willing vessle at the cost of a sacrificial offering) is slowly, but surely killing off anyone who happens to appear in the film for more than 3 minutes.

When Betsy and Tom decide to go back to the woods to look for more clues, they find an abandoned tent and a diary belonging to Betsys brother, and the information inside that diary leads the pair to Kara, one of Betsys old school friends and a member of the cult her brother has supposedly joined, who was kicked out some years ago after being shunned by the cultists…and, I cant really talk about much more without spoiling the film…Not that the films complex enough that you wont figure it out in the first 10 minutes whats going on…But hey, thats the fun of watching it I guess.

Basically; going into this one, my expectations were rock bottom. After a string of sub par and basically unwatchable ‘Camp Blood’ sequels, all this film really had to do was tell a basic story for longer than an hour and i’d. be raving over it. and…Well, this film has a ruddy good go at that!

The plot isnt exactly original, but it HAS a plot…which again, given the last 3 movies have been the cinematic equivilent of dumping raw footage in a blender with a half cup of house paint, is actually a pretty big achievement.

Its got a coherent(ish) plot, it paces itself not TOO badly, the three act structure IS in place, has bumpy, but not terrible transitions between the acts, and other than some repetition and slowdown in the second act (which…a LOT of films do suffer from honestly) this thing keeps pretty good timing honestly. It opens giving you enough information to set the rest of the film up, and while it really does flag on that 2nd act, it does manage to pull itself back together enough for a 3rd act that ends about as well as this film could have ended, and even puts a nice little twist at the end that I wasnt 100% expecting. Which again, for most films, that would be the minimum. For a ‘Camp Blood’ movie? its like jumping from the ‘silent’ era, to ‘Talkies’.

Unfortunately; thats kind of where the praise begins and ends for me sadly. As while this film ACTUALLY DOES have the barest minimum to constitute a script and plot, on a technical level it seems to go to the wall pretty hard.

Starting with what I didnt like about the script, the characters are all pretty two dimensional, Everyone who isnt Betsy, Tom or the Clown Killer act incredibly passive and dismissive, to the point where it feels like the director basically told them to just ad lib the scene, but refuse to believe anything the other actors are saying. Betsy and Tom dont get off lightly either, basically SOLELY acting as a mouthpiece for the audience, they dont get much depth or development as characters, and their relationship status is pretty much non existent. theres no chemistry between these characters, they just scream ‘Best friend’ energy from start to finish.

Not helping matters either, the film does fall into repetition pretty quickly early on, with kills that start fairly strong, before just becoming kind of low effort by the end. Theres also a LOT of walking still going on in this film. and while its nowhere NEAR as bad as ‘Camp Blood 4 and 5’ on that front, there was still enough of it that it became pretty clear they had about 45 minutes of plot they needed to stretch out to an hour and a quarter.

To that end, the direction and cine are also pretty problematic, the direction itself again; is probably the strongest seen since Brad Sykes was manning the franchise, but at the same time when you consider that between then and this film we’ve had, what many consider to be Mark Polonias worst film and 2 entries from Dustin Ferguson that might as well have been just one film released twice of 30 somethings walking for 78 minutes…it isnt much praise.

There is a creative vision here, which is good. This isnt an entry relying on a heavy colour grade to give it style and substance…unfortunately the film seemingly had a budget of $50 and a pat on the back to work with, and the results speak for themselves. A film that absolutely appears to be trying to make the best out of a bad situation, that; in reality, succeeds about 20% of the time in ACTUALLY doing something kinda sorta half decent.

The rest of the film? is sloppy, plenty of scenes shot for function over style, often without a stabalizer, with overly basic sequencing in mind. it looks basic and SUPER cheap for a not insignificant chunk of the runtime…again; SOMEHOW it manages to outflank everything thats come before it, but all this has really done is set the standard of how good a ‘Camp Blood’ movie can look from ‘Pretty bloody awful’ to ‘actually not half bad.’

Cine is super shakey, composition is uneven with the camera regularly quickly jolting into the correct framing when the director realised the shot wasnt set up for the cast to move within the frame as instructed. You get the feeling there were a lot of ‘first take, and done’ moments in this…its basic whats here ultimately, but basic for the most part is better than bad. While this film is ACHING for more B-roll (seriously, other than one or two examples, this films wides and mid wides from tail to snout.) it at least appears to be trying to tell a story in a more effective way.

Probably the worst aspect of this film though has to be its edit. Which is…frankly, the worst the series has had so far. To get the positives out of the way up front, the colour grade, I feel, is actually not half bad. it embraces the colours of the location, its slightly oversaturated for the most part. Its nice to see a film have a richer grade after 3 films of washed out, grey grading…But the edit itself? awful. shots cut way too late, or occasionally too early, the pacing of the sequences is all over the place, the thing cuts whenever it wants. The titles and credits on this one are abysmal with static text overlayed onto low res screengrabs from the movie to open the film, and default font text throughout.

That of course doesnt even mention the BIZARRE ‘CG’ (and im reluctant to call it CG, because…realistically its just a 2 frame low res gif of lightning overlayed on to the clown killers face) YES! in this film the clown killer can shoot lightning from his eyes to stun people…I have NO idea why, but the 2-3 times they do it, it makes the film suddenly feel like some kind of failed ‘Tim & Eric’ sketch…it REALLY pulled me out of the action honestly and I felt only cheapened the film further…

The biggest sin this film commits is that it DESPERATELY tries to squeeze every second it can out of this film to hit runtime. To the extent that the credits run for a full 5 minutes or so at half speed. and they even go as far as slowing entire scenes down by 3-4%…Not enough for casual viewers to really notice a difference, but just enough that people who CAN notice that stuff to see they’re trying to squeeze literal seconds onto this things runtime.

Probably the most aggregious example of this is a sequence where Tom is watching TV eating cereal, and they randomly decide to show 3-5 minutes of footage from a show starring the directors mum as a clown, and the director and his sister in the audience as kids…I dont know if this was a pilot for something, if it was a local Public access show, or if it was something more than that…But ‘The Mrs. Clown Show’ takes a not insignificant portion of this films runtime and I had NO idea why it was playing…Not *quite* as bad as the last film deciding to run 15 minutes of Sterline entertainment movies in the middle of the runtime…but still pretty bad.

Performance wise, its a wash. NON of the cast perform anywhere even remotely passing ‘good’ everyone is overly dry, reads their lines with next to no emotion or enthusiasm and for the most part, it feels like everyone is reading their lines as if they’d just seen them in the instant moment the words were leaving their mouths.

They’re stiff, lifeless dont bring any physicality to the role, quite often they’ll just flat out break the 4th wall by deliveirng their lines directly down the barrel of the lens. If I didnt know any better, i’d say these were just the directors friends doing him a favour. Because if these were trained professionals…I’d have questions about their qualifications.

and topping it all off, we have a soundtrack thats 75% recycled music from other Sterling entertainment films (mainly Camp Blood films) and 25% royalty free tracks sourced from ‘free to use’ sites online. its haphazard, randomly dropped in, and for SOME reason a good chunk of the film will have multiple music tracks, just randomly sat on top of one another creating nothing short of an obnoxious din. Where it works, it kind of works…But im really getting fed up of the camp blood music thats been in use now for at least 5 years at this point, and I really hope they shake things up agian with the next film.

‘Camp Blood 666’ is, surprisingly; probably the best entry that Sterling have produced up to this point. Its by no means a brilliant film, but it has a functional script, it more or less knows what it wants to do, even if it doesnt have the budget to fully try to do it, and there are a couple of nice moments here.

I still cant say im absolutely in love with this one, but its probably my favourite Camp Blood Film since Brad Sykes original closer ‘Within the Woods’. I would say this isnt an essential watch, but if you have seen the original ‘Camp Blood’ or ‘Camp Blood 2’ and wanted to know where to go next. This is probably as good a starting point as any.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/camp-blood-666/

‘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/

The third Pikachu short (and, I believe the last time a pikachu short would consistently play before a mainline pokemon movie outside of Japan) ‘Pikachu & Pichu’ essentially takes the ‘silent film’ styling that the last two films prominently featured and takes it to its logistical conclusion. By essentially bringing the comedy prat falls to the big city and playing it like some kind of buster keaton by way of Laurel and Hardy pic.

The plot picks up with our gang (presumably) in Goldenrod city, the big shopping town of Johto, Ash, Misty and Brock have put some time aside for a little retail therapy, and essentially take their pokemon to a rooftop playground so that they can chill and have fun for a few hours, while the gang go shopping.

Unfortunately for Pikachu, a couple of rowdy Pichu start antagonizing him by making faces and spanking themselves (…sure okay why not…)

One thing leads to another, and Pikachu ends up falling off the rooftop, and, while he survives the fall, he has NO idea how to get back to the top! THAT is where the Pichu brothers come in! they agree to help Pikachu get back up there, but when an aggressive Houndour threatens to throw the plan off track, the gang have to deviate into the side allys of Goldenrod leading to near scrapes AND a visit to the Pichu brothers home! a wonderfully charming tyre village housed almost entirely by baby pokemon and 1st stage evolution pokemon. As you can imagine chaos, comedy and more ensues!

This thing comes so close to being my favourite one of these. We, once again have a clear 3 act narrative, the pacing is lively and to the point, the characters are animate and genuinely fun to be around. The art style is top tier, I love how flowing and effortless this all looks and even the CG blends into the production relatively seamlessly. Even the soundtrack is solid with a mix of modernised ragtime sounding pieces and a few instances that play on the tones of ‘Rhapsody in blue’ it all works pretty effortlessly for me honestly…The shorts at this point really are as good, if not better than the features. With only 2 issues with this one really stopping it from claiming the top spot.

The first is Meowth, who…Once again is seemingly just here because he is. Hes crammed into this special under the guise that Jessie and James have got him a job working in the city. But he gets 2 scenes in this, neither particularly funny and both just feel forced and a bit weird. they could have cut them and noone would have noticed honestly.

And the other is the introduction of a ‘narrator’ who essentially overclarifies whatver we’re seeing on screen to a painful degree…if a Pichu is hanging off a ledge, the Narrator will say ‘Oh no! Pichu is hanging off the ledge!’ mercifully it doesnt happen TOO often in this short, but it totally kills the atmosphere and really pulled me out of the short…I hear this happens more and more frequently as these shorts go on…So as you can imagine…im thrilled.

‘Pikachu & Pichu’ Is once again, a pretty solid short. It would have been my favourite had it not been self sabotaged by the narrator and just a couple of moments that went a little *slowburn* for me. Otherwise, this one is still fun and cutesy and I recommend checking this out if you enjoy Pokemon, the series, the movies, the games or just cute animal cartoons honestly…

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/pikachu-pichu/

The second of the ‘Pikachu’ shorts is short, sweet and to the point. It opens with the gang stopping off to rest after a long day hiking in the mountains of Johto, when disaster strikes! As Togepi accidentally rolls away down a hill, unable to stop, causing Pikachu and the gang to give chase to try and save her! Only! It gets worse!! Because at the bottom of the hill is a huge sink hole, and the gang, STILL unable to stop, end up tumbling down it and into a positive pokemon paradise!

Housed inside a massive tree, WAVES of pokemon from all walks of life are having a ball! But theres no time to dawdle now! We have a togepi to save! So the gang head into the tree, meet a very friendly Elekid who offers to help them, but when they find Togepi, theres a problem…It turns out that she’s fallen into a nest of Exeggcute, and because Togepi is egg shaped, they think shes one of them, and get VERY defensive of her. What follows then is a mission to try and calm the Exeggcute, rescue Togepi and get back to Ash and co before they realise they’re gone!…Oh and Meowth is in this…for some reason.

Once again we have another pretty simple, but quite effective little short film here. rather than it being a series of Vignettes intercut with trippy visuals this time, this feels instead like a single coherent story with a three act structure that I think holds up pretty well. There are some issues here, I still dont really fully know why Meowth is in this one, he doesnt interact with the main story, and seemingly is only there to…well…be meowth.

But that aside, this doesnt waste time, has a good pace, does what it needs to do, and then gets out of there. The art style is decent, theres a couple continuity flubs on the English dub (a Polywhirl is mistaken for a Polywrath…) But nothing i’d get my flaming torch for.

Basically, if you enjoyed ‘Pikachus Vacation’ or you have a love of cutesy animal driven movies, you’ll probably really quite enjoy this one too. Its not trying to be the smartest movie in the room. Its just trying to tell a simple story effectively for a younger audience. and I think it pretty much achieves that with vigour.

Another instance where, personally? I preferred the short film over the main feature!

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/pokemon-pikachus-rescue-adventure/

Pokemon 3: The Movie – Spell of the Unknown (Entai) ((…Yes, that really is the US/EU translation of the title for this one)) kind of marks the beginning of the decline of the OG pokemon fandom (Yes…I am fully aware there is still 20+ movies to go in this franchise). By this point in time Pokemon had been a phenominon for well over 5 years it had spawned a (by this point) ‘long running’ TV series, 5 games across two different regions (with a 6th being released at Christmas of this same year) The trading card game was WELL underway and fully embracing the Johto region. And yet, this would mark the final time that a Pokemon movie would get a nationwide Cinema release, with the next entry only showing in select cinemas across the country and each film after that being either direct to DVD/VHS or an even more limited cinema run…OR in at least one or two cases, it just got dumped on kids cable TV and was told to fight for itself.

I remember this period of time well, with a lot of rumblings about a potential ‘Gameboy Advance’ pokemon title in the works, there was still an enthusiasm for Pokemon in the air! Buuuuut, you could begin to sense a feeling of fatigue. With other ‘monster’ based series like Digimon and Yu-gi-oh creeping into the frame, the former of which was sniping younger pokemon fans particularly, and the latter aiming for elder pokemon fans looking for a bit more ‘teen angst’ in their monster battling. Focus was kind of being pulled away from the series a little bit. And while the ‘Hoen’ era would still be another movie or so away. This kind of felt like a natural ‘closing/jumping off’ point for anyone whos attention was beginning to drift on the series.

I was one of those folks, as there was a slightly longer then usual gap between this film and the next entry. I pretty much hung onto playing Pokemon Gold/Silver/Crystal and the card games up to around the start of 2002, before dropping pokemon almost fully in favour of Yu-gi-oh. And, to be honest? if I was going to pick a point to jump out of Pokemon? This was probably about as good as it gets.

The film opens with a father and daughter, Molly and Spencer living in the rich and rural town of ‘Greenfield’ Spencer is a pokemon professor who specializes in legendary pokemon, and he regails molly with tales of the legendaries adventures from a historic book. While telling Molly about a tale involving the legendary pokemon ‘Entai’, Spencer gets a call asking him to come right away to the ‘Ruins of Alph’ where a significant discovery has been made, a secret chamber containing dozens of pokemon shaped runes and a box of carvings has been located. But on touching them, Spencer and the team unleash ‘The Unown’ Alphabet shaped pokemon which, when they swarm, can generate phenominal psychic powers.

Spencer is taken to a nether world by the Unown who shoot out of the chamber and into the sky. News of Spencers dissapearence is relayed to Molly, whos already only recently lost her mother, and her raw emotion summon the Unown to the mansion. who begin to congregate and generate the aforementioned psychic abilities, transforming Mollys raw emotions into a ‘safe’ alternate dream world for her to live in, in which her father is reincarnated as an Entai and shes free to live the life she wants forever and ever.

The Unown crystalize the entire mansion, lock everyone away from Molly and Entai and continue to build her dream world behind closed doors. Its here that we finally catch back up with Ash, Misty and Brock. Who are reunited for a tour of Johto and are on a mission to take on all the Johto gyms when they arrive at Greenfield expecting a serean countryside jaunt, and find a totally terrestrialized hellscape.

Teaming up with a local girl named Lisa who, after a battle, joins in on the sidelines to help Ash and co get up to the mansion. Also on the prowl however are Team Rocket. Who…really seemingly wernt expecting to be pulled into an adventure this week…letalone a cinematic one, but so as not to miss out, they tag along too just to see whats going on and scope if theres any opportunity to ‘prepare for trouble’

And so, we have the rest of the film. Ash, Misty, Brock and a hiding Team Rocket slowly try to infiltrate the mansion and get Molly away to sever the connection with the Unown, while the Unown warp and bend reality, weakening the teams pokemon, generating their own, super strong pokemon and warping the mansion to try and stop the gang progressing. With MORE than a few surprises along the way.

And, having rewatched all 3 for the first time in probably 20 years now. If I had to pick one of these for a ‘regular rotation’ pick…it’d probably be this one. It seems to me to be the movie where the Pokemon team FINALLY managed to get all their ducks in a line.

The plot is complex, but not TOO complicated that kids would struggle with it, they use symbolism to help visualise trauma and processing trauma in a way that is somewhat subtle, but creative and clearly marked. They pick a couple of plotpoints/plotlines and develop them fully, rather than throwing 2 dozen half baked ‘moral lessons’ out that flip flop all over the place and either dont really go anywhere, or contradict the fundamental messages of the series (the last 2 movies were TERRIBLE for doing this)

The characters (for the most part) all get something fairly meaty to do here, which is really welcome after ‘Pokemon 2000’ basically stranded Misty and Tracy out of the movie for 30-40 minutes. Even Team Rocket who have almost ZERO involvement in the plot for this thing get arguably some of their best character pieces to date here, breaking the 4th wall regularly to lament that they dont really understand WHY they’re in this movie, while also trying to hint to the film makers to make them be more involved in the next one…Which I thought was a nice touch.

The film FINALLY nails a good balance between cheesy anime comedy and some actually kind of deep emotional cinema. it mixes laughs and pathos well, and while I think the ending is maybe a little *too* schmaltzy in having to tie off EVERY lose end…That and I cant really forgive that they basically forget Lisa is even a thing in this movie by the final act. What it DOES manage to succeed with, it succeeds tremendously.

Essentially; this has been what i’ve wanted out of Pokemon movie since I started rewatching these. A plot that *feels* like it could cleanly be a plot from the anime series. Just given a grander scale and a bigger budget than normal to realise it. While ALSO taking care to try and slot it INTO the anime, rather than just vaguely gesturing at a time period it *could* take place in, and hoping noone tries to probe too deeply.

The animation is probably some of the best of any of the cinematic entries. theres a nice detailed smooth flow to the animation that reminds me of the stronger elements of animation from ‘The First Movie’, but they’ve FINALLY managed to really get the CGI to a place where it isnt aggressively upsetting to me. They combine the two in a much more subtle way (barring the Unown sequences…which…im assuming they REALLY wanted this film to be shown in 3D) and the results are a film where the hand drawn elements of the animation feel utterly delightful, and the CG elements, rather than working against that hand drawn vibe (as was the case with the first two films) here, compliments the animation, resulting in a kind of ‘best of both worlds’. I wont go as far as to say its perfect, as 25 years on, even this offering is beginning to show a little ‘creakage’. But hey, this is likely as good as its ever going to get. and I still think it holds up pretty well.

The art direction is superb, with some exquisit designs for the crystalized mansion and the town of greenfield. The fight sequences feel much MUCH more nicely choreographed than the last entry, with a lot more coherency and intricate fight moves taking place. They manage to capture something that WAS in the first film, but WASNT in the second, which is a sense of scale and grandness in pokemon battles. You feel every thud of a ‘take down’ the ‘flamethrower’ moves FEEL organic and give a sense of heat. This one clearly had a keen eye over it, and it shows.

Performance wise, The gang turn up once again, Veronica Taylor is on fire as Ash here, probably giving my favourite performance of the character so far with this turn. Rachel Lillis and Eric Stuart are fantastic as Misty and Brock in this one, and im particularly delighted that they ACTUALLY manage to bring more of the characters into this entry, something I feel was woefully missing in the last 2 films. Here? it feels like they actually had TIME to give these characters a bit more space and it makes the world of difference.

But for my money, I’ve got to say my favourite turn in this one has to be Rachel, Eric and Maddie Blausteins turns as Team Rocket, while they are here in a HEAVILY reduced role, every single line they deliver is frankly perfrect. they hit every comedy note, every dramatic moment. These characters are superbly written across the shows runtime, and given how little they are visible in this one? that makes it all the more impressive that they leave such a lasting impression.

One thing I am starting to get a bit fed up of though is the idea of every movie having a legendary pokemon voiced by a slightly deep set man. Not even a charasmatic or interesting deep set voice. Dan Green here as Entai is giving ‘Beige’ as far as voices go. He gets some fantastic lines, but like Mewtwo and Lugia in the previous films…I dont know what the obsession with giving pokemon passive deep voices is…but it does nothing for me honestly…

Aaaaand finally, the soundtrack! and this (I think) is the first film in the series to NOT have a star studded late 90s full pop album accompanyment. Insteadl; we have orchestral and poppy offerings that, essentially sound like grander stylistic plays for the TV series. and I absolutely loved it! I think it really gives this film a sense of its own identity, I thought it fit perfectly and was timed really well. Probably the best score so far honestly, with the remix/cover of the Johto era theme tune opening this film being a particular highlight!

Pokemon 3 may have been the beginning of the end for MAIN mainstream pokemon fandom. But if this is the movie that begins the shuttering, its going out with a BANG. I really enjoyed this one. With a decently composed script, rock solid animation, solid performances and a great soundtrack. This is probably the first Pokemon movie that I can confidently say HAS held up to the modern day, and its the first one that I think WOULD still appeal to a child audience. Its the first one I could see me revisiting again someday, and its one I can definitely recommend you revisit if you grew up with these movies and want a real nostalgia hit!

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/pokemon-3-the-movie/

‘Pokemon: The First Movie’ proved itself to be a relative money printer…So, emboldened by the success and with two new Pokemon games AND a new series of the anime on the horizon. Our lads over at Nintendo and the pokemon company once again set to work on creating a sequel to, what was at the time, a juggernaut in full motion.

For context, when the first Pokemon film came out, ‘Pokemania’ was on the up…as in, it STILL had fans to attract and audiences to reach, but by the time of ‘Pokemon: The Movie 2000 – The Power of One (Ft: Weird Al)’ the franchises popularity REALLY began to hit its peak. a fandom primarily made up of kids waited with relish to find ANY juicy gossip they could about the mythical ‘Johto’ region, and when this film announced it would feature MULTIPLE new pokemon from that region (Bearing in mind, the previous film had introduced us to ‘Snubble’, ‘Marril’ and ‘Donphan’) INCLUDING what would turn out to be that series mainline legendary pokemon ‘Lugia’ well, things really got kicked up to the next level!

I had assumed that this was the first film in the ‘Johto’ series of movies…But the memory cheats! as this film takes place during the back end (if not THE end) of the ‘Orange Island’ arc of the anime. The orange island for folks not in the know, was essentially a bit of a filler season they made to fill in the gap when Pokemon ‘Gold & Silver’ wernt *quite* ready for release just yet. and saw our gang Ash, Misty and Bro- I mean! newcomer ‘Tracy’ travelling from island to island completing challenges.

My guess is that this film opens with the gang chilling out AFTER completing the orange isles challenge and getting ready to venture into Johto, as we open with Ash and co hanging out on a boat captained by ‘Maren’ I believe a one off character who somehow gets a pretty meaty chunk of this films runtime…

Anyway, the gang are having a nice time until dark storm clouds roll in, an unexpected and deadly storm begins to play havoc with the ocean and the gang find their boat landcrashed on a mysterious island at the center of the orange isles.

What caused the storm? Well that would be Laurence the 3rd! (Or Laurence III…I…I dont know his personal preference) Probably THE most forgettable ‘villain’ in film history, and I do NOT use that title lightly. What do I know about Laurence? he’s a posh boy with money who’s decided to become a pokemon ‘Collector’ what he means by that is that he intends to ‘Catch’em all’ (but here its bad because he’s bad) and he’s short 3 legendary pokemon in completing his set (im guessing he never saw ‘Pokemon: The first movie’ or he’d know he still needs Mew and Mewtwo…)

ANYWAY! – The three legendary birds are ‘Moltres’, ‘Zapdos’ and ‘Articuno’ and these birds are the guardians of Fire, Lightning and Ice respectively. They are heated rivals and have spent many centuries seperated across three of the Orange isles, hidden away but using their abilities to maintain the natural flow of the ocean and island life.

Laurence wishes to capture all 3, as theres an ancient folk tale stating that the person who is able to bring all 3 legendary birds together will summon the guardian of the sea himself ‘Lugia’ and bring with him carnage and ocean based terror I guess?

So Laurence has stolen ‘Howls Moving castle’ and taken to the skies with the aim of trapping the 3 birds in cages and forcing Lugia to appear. and with that, he disspears for a good chunk of the movie.

Meanwhile, Ash and the crew are welcomed by the locals of the island, who tell him the same legend and, because he’s a pokemon trainer, they assign him a not so simple mission to keep the island tradition. they want him to travel to the three legendary bird islands and capture an orb containing a remnent of their essence. by uniting the orbs on a central island, its said that peace shall be restored.

Ash wastes no time and heads out…and from here things kind of get a bit messy. Laurence reappears, catches the 3 birds, Ash and the gang (including team rocket) ALSO get captured by Laurence, who underestimates the group and leaves them WITH the birds…which they promptly release. The birds then destroy Laurences moving castle, causing it to crash to earth, leaving him stuck on a small island, watching the rest of the film play out via telescope for the rest of the movie. Yes…our MAIN VILLAIN, is relegated to watching the ENTIRE rest of the movie…through a telescope from a tiny island miles away from the action…and other than one final moment at the VERY end of the film…he does NOTHING else…I forgot he was even IN this movie by the time the 3rd act rolled around…I was genuinely surprised when he came back on screen.

Meanwhile the birds begin attacking each other causing violence and mayhem and turning Kanto and the surrounding orange islands into a chaotic weather storm freakout of hail, snow and heavy winds and rain.

Ash and the gang meet with a slowking (who they just…recognise IMMEDIATELY as a slowking without checking the pokedex or anything…which is odd) and the talking slowking (which again…is just accepted) tells them that their mission is more than symbolic and will ACTUALLY save the day…leaving Ash, pikachu and team rocket of all villains to ACTUALLY band together to recover the 3 orbs, summon Lugia and settle the legendary war before pokemon AND people get seriously hurt.

What I will say about this entry is it does feel like a sequel that learnt a bit from the mistakes the first film made. The first film felt a bit thrown together and gave out mixed messages that somehow took polar opposite sides of an arguement AT THE SAME TIME and STILL managed to somehow completely undermine the messaging of the franchise on the whole.

This film doesnt really go as deep or complex as that, at its core it almost feels like an extended episode of the anime series, but with a bigger budget and (for the time) higher quality effects. In that regard it does feel a bit cheaper and lower rent than ‘The First Movie’ but what it lacks in intricate design and H.R Geiger lawsuits, it makes up for with some interesting art direction and a more solid story.

When I say ‘A more solid story’ though, what I mean is that the actual plot makes more sense than the last entry, hangs together better, and doesnt end with the entire cast all getting mindwiped and forgetting the movie even happened…

This is a pretty straightforward, if not a little TOO straightforward 3 act single plot narrative. There are some nice little side avenues here (Team Rocket getting to play good guys for a while is fun, and Misty getting a bit embarrassed when shes mistaken for Ash’s girlfriend is good for a while) but it isnt trying to overcomplicate things, its just trying to tell a basic ‘Pokemon should be free and allowed to enjoy their lives’ plotline with a little bit of pokemon legend thrown in for good measure.

What I DO have problems with however is the structuring of the story itself, with two glaringly big problems really knocking this thing back. One being the fact they introduce a villain, give him LITERALLY nothing to do but kick off the birds fighting, and then they strand him on a rock for the rest of the film barring a final 5 minute pop up in the 3rd act. the films an hour and 20 long, and i’d be amazed if Laurence is in it for 15 minutes of that…and he’s supposed to be our LEAD VILLAIN. its rediculous, it feels like they invented him and immediately couldnt figure out what to do with him…

The other issue is continuity and resolution. There are multiple points here where the film does things that raise continuity issues, things like Ash recognising and even immediately befriending talking pokemon he’s never encountered before, an explanation for why Lugia and the legendary birds are now somehow all located in the Orange Isles, when the birds are native to Kanto and Lugia is considered a sleeping beast of the sea that should be located in the furthest reaches of Johto. The fact that Tracy and Misty LITERALLY do nothing in this movie. they stand next to Ash for most of the first act, and then for the rest of the movie they just watch whats happening from a distance (the same as Laurence) until the end of the movie when they all get to carry on their adventures. Its astounding, as those characters are our MAIN characters supports…and they do NOTHING here.

But probably the worst aspect of this is the ending (and mild spoilers here) but the film just kind of…stops. They resolve everything, the day is saved…but we dont even really get a ‘gang thank the locals, summerize the adventure and set off on more adventures’ sign off…the film just stops once Lugia flies off, leaving the film to trail off to black with Team Rocket just…weirdly rambling…NOT helped by the fact the credits are scored with 3 TOTALLY differently toned 90s pop songs, a R&B style poppy number, a Polka song…and ‘Flying without wings’ by westlife…I was as stunned as you no doubt are by that last one…

The actual pacing is a little on the slow side, but its at least consistently paced. the plot twists and turns are nice enough, but a little bit lower stakes than the Mewtwo plotline…It feels a little lumbering honestly, but i’d choose slowburn and consistent over erratic and inconsistent any day.

The characters are all fine enough, they feel much more in tune with the anime than the last film, no weird crying pokemon in this one is always welcome. But I wasnt a fan of the vocal choices for Lugia and slowking, the former sounding like a poor impression of Mewtwo (itself, sounding like a poor impression of Orson Welles) and Slowking sounds like Lugia, with just a rounder more yawning quality…neither I feel suit the character of the creatures, and i’ll be honest. I think making ANY pokemon talk that isnt Meowth feels a bit odd and disconnected from the point of pokemon…

Beyond that, my feelings are similar here to the first film. as mentioned the art direction is nice, but a little safer than the stylisations they went for in the first film, the CGI here is MUCH more prominent, and has aged MUCH worse than ‘The First Movies’ handful of CG moments…HD scans are NOT this movies friend with sleek, clean and beautiful hand drawn animation being superimposed over what looks like a PS3 Cutscene…its hideous frankly.

But beyond those moments, its a nice enough looking picture, the voice acting (barring the mentioned) is as solid as the first, no better no worse, the style feels a little more simplified than the first film (more in line with the anime from the looks of it)

The soundtrack is positively Schizophrenic. With entries by Donna Summer, The B-52s, Weird Al, Westlife, O-town and Dreamstreet. It all clashes horribly, NON of it works, not ONE song feels like it ACTUALLY should punctuate this movie…and yet SOMEHOW. its still marginally better than the first movie for me. I cant explain it. it has to be listened to to be believed quite honestly.

‘Pokemon – The Movie 2000’ is absolutely a flawed picture, but I do feel like it has learnt a few thing after the first film came out, and while its still a VERY messy production, it does feel like its trying to figure things out here, and as a result, we get a clear and pretty clean plotline with our characters feeling much more directly involved in the plot (unless they’re secondary characters, in which case they’ll have to watch this movie through a telescope from the outskirts) and the stake, while lowered, at least feel like they *kind* of make sense.

When this first came out, I probably watched it half a dozen times, and then didnt touch the thing again for 24 years. Rewatching it again tonight, im still not sold on these movies, I can absolutely see how younger pokemon fans would have lost their minds at this back in the day…But now the moments kind of passed, im left wondering how on EARTH this film has managed to maintain the goodwill it has over the years. Its absolutely not a great introduction to pokemon…and I think a modern kid audience would have wandered off by the halfway point.

Definetly one to chalk up to ‘The Memory Cheats’ and ‘Nostalgia is a siren’ my advice? stick with the memories…they’re better than the realities.

Edit – Oh yeh! and someone involved in writing this thing has never seen a boat in action before. because for some reason ALL the boats in this film spend more time sailing ON LAND, than they do on the water…I assume the guy writing this saw a photo of a boat on a trailer, and just assumed they were some kind of wind powered land vehical. BIZARRE.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/pokemon-the-movie-2000/

Its probably a quite well known ‘fun fact’ that whenever a Pokemon movie is released in cinemas, it’s usually preceeded by a short film featuring the franchises main mascot ‘Pikachu’. The ‘Pikachu Shorts’ as they’ve become known are on the front end of every single ‘OG Timeline’ pokemon movie released in Japan, and *were* at the front of most of the EU/US releases, though I believe a few of them were either missed out, or relegated to DVD extras…

In either case, these shorts are usually sans human characters (or feature them in a VERY limited capacity) and instead focus almost entirely on pokemon oriented stories. They usually play like silent films in the sense that theres minimal to no dialogue and the films are very easy to understand the plots of…Realistically I think these were aimed at the younger pokemon fans of the day who maybe wouldnt fully understand the complexities of the ‘main feature’ but still wanted to feel like they were part of the experience and could have some fun.

And thus! the first short film ‘Pikachu’s Vacation’ featured as the opening film to ‘Pokemon: The First Movie’ and…im actually quite surprised that somehow I had a much nicer time with this movie, than with the main feature.

The premise is basically that Ash, Brock and Misty need to run some errands, and they arrive in a town featuring a pokemon resort! Basically a place you can dump your pokemon off at filled with all the stuff pokemon love, to give them a well needed rest and vacation from trying to ‘be the very best like noone ever was’.

But this will be FAR from a well rested vacation! as almost immediately Mistys ‘Togepi’ realises its SUPER hungry and begins crying uncontrollably, leading Pikachu and the gang to try and find a way to pacify the rogue egg…Unfortunately for them; ALSO staying at the resort is a group of boistrous overly loud pokemon. A Snubble, A Marril, a cubone, and the teams leader a Raichu.

They refuse to play ball when Pikachu tries to politely ask that they quieten down to help calm Togepi, instead they get louder and more aggressive, which in turn prompts Ash’s pokemon to race to back up Pikachu, which in turn starts a battle of wits! With Squirtle and Marril having a swim race, and Pikachu and Raichu racing on foot! When they accidentally step on a Charizards tail however, the team will have to put aside their differences to save the day and salvage what they can of their vacation! discovering friendship along the way!

And, this is just a really kind of nice, sweet little short film. Its something of a slapstick comedy, it isnt taking itself too seriously, and it tells a simple story entertainingly and light heartedly.

The short runs to approx 20 minutes, and there is some minor pacing issues here and there, particularly in the opening act when they’re trying to pacify Togepi. I feel like they linger on that aspect a little too long and I would have preferred to have seen that time been repurpoused into a Bulbasaur v Cubone battle, or something a bit more meaty. As it stands its a joke that kind of overstays its welcome, but the whole thing is short, so I cant really complain too much.

One thing that is a bit odd about this one is they have these SUPER trippy scene transitions where they get pokemon on a ‘tie-dye’ backdrop making rhythimic dances and chants to an acoustic backing…It wouldnt be SO unusual if the film was longer, but for at least the first 2 acts they basically cram one in every 2-4 minutes. I can imagine watching them on a big screen must have been a bit trippy honestly, but then frustratingly in the 3rd act they stop bothering with them really…It felt a bit inconsistent.

That being said the scripts lightweight and going for comedy over all else, and I think it succeeds at that. the characters are about as complex as they need to be, the pacing outside of the first act runs at a clip and the act structurings maybe a *little* weighted in favour of that first act…but the whole things 20 minutes…I cant really be too harsh on it.

The animation looks a bit lower quality (more in line with the TV anime) than the main feature, which is understandable…part of me wonders whether the plan with this short was to segment it up (framed by the transition slides) and pop a chunk at the end of each episode of the anime, as I believe its even in a TV aspect ratio…I could totally see them, last minute, deciding to just stick all of them together and bundle it with the film to try and offer ‘value for money’…that would explain a lot.

The soundtracks 90s pop-tastic, but also quite welcome…Honestly? I really kind of had a soft spot for this one. I didnt feel like the main feature had aged all that well, but this thing? I absolutely think you could show this to kids today and they’d enjoy it probably as much as kids did back then.

‘Pikachus vacation’ is short, sweet and to the point, delivering an enjoyable experience that younger kids will likely love, older kids may find a bit babyish and adults?…well, adults will probably have more important things to do…But they’ll probably think its cute non the less! If anything this ones gotten better for me with age, its still not one i’d probably have on *regular* rotation, but if you havent seen this one and you like Pokemon, i’d say it was worth your time.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/pikachus-vacation/

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/

Watched on Saturday February 8, 2025.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/a-matter-of-loaf-and-death/1/