Well okay...I played the role of the nice guy yesterday and took my best friend's little
brothers, the twins Alex and Chris, to see PokeMon: The First Movie.  Its a movie that 
adults have been bitching and moaning about just as much as every other kids' fad, such
as Power Rangers and Barney, and even when I was just a li'l shaver, the Teenage Mutant
Ninja Turtles.  But I didn't complain.  Heck, I offered to take the boys to see it, 
because I knew how dejected they were feeling because they hadn't seen it, and they were
such huge fans.  They had all the videos, they both had binders full of all the rare 
cards, they both knew all the little monsters' names by heart.  Hey, I was there once.
I couldn't resist asking their parents if I could take them.  I don't quite think I've 
ever seen the boys' faces light up quite like that.  

So was it as bad as every adult said it is?

Not in the least.  I'm tired of adults getting pissy about this.  GRanted, I like PokeMon.
I have liked it since it was some obscure Anime show that was on at 6:00 am on sunday 
morning when I got home from the Rocky Horror Picture Show.  I though to myself "Hey look,
it's that anime show that's so damn big in Japan!  Well it'll never make it in the US."
Boy was I wrong.  But regardless, I thought it was cool, and I still do.  It's not any-
where NEAR as obnoxious as Barney or Power Rangers.  It's creative, it encourages a lot
of great messages for kids, and it presents said messages in a non-condescending way. 
And it's Anime, so...it's gotta be cool.

I know, I promise to get to the movie review soon, just one more thing.

A lot of parents can't figure out PokeMon.  Why the hell they are so baffled by this 
concept that their 5 year old children can grasp so easily?  Well I could explain that,
but that's a whole other Mindspawn.  But anyway, let me explain it here for you, once and
for all.  PokeMon is short for "Pocket Monsters".  What they are, are monsters that are 
all over the world (over 150 of them now) that people collect, catch, and train.  And then
they take these monsters and pit them against other peoples' trained PokeMons in matches.
The matches are, for the most part, friendly and non-violent.  According to the show, the
vast majority of the world revolves around PokeMon.  There are PokeMon Dojos, Hospitals, 
Resorts, Restaurants (that serve TO the PokeMon, not restaurants that serve Pikachu Fillet
or a nice Bulbasaur Salad), etc.  And people travel the earth catching and training their
PokeMon, then entering competitions to become the Greatest PokeMon Trainer in the World.
I don't expect you to memorize the list of all the PokeMon (I was bugging Chris and Alex
because I only recognized half of them...the rest I had to ask the names of), but at least
now you can understand what's going on in the show, and in the movie.

Okay, now we have a movie to talk about here, I just wanted to get the preliminaries out
of the way, since so many people seem to have such a problem with what could possibly be
one of the LEAST obnoxious of kids fads.  But actually, as anyone who has already seen the
movie knows, I have two movies to review.  The first of which is just a little 22 minute
short called "Pikachu's Vacation".  Then of course, we have the movie itself, PokeMon: The
First Movie, or as the unadvertised title is, PokeMon: Mewtwo Strikes Back.  Yes, with such
an original title, we can see why it was kept hidden from the Press Packet.  What I found 
so funny was that minus previews, the whole feature was only an hour and a half long.  And
yet, it had a short film before it that was almost a half hour...which makes the movie just
over an hour.  Plenty of time to develop a deep meaningful plot and explore the deep inner 
psyches of the trainers and their relationship with their pocket monsters.  Or they could
just say fuck it and throw in a lot of PokeMon battles and Mewtwo destroying various places
over and over again.  I'll explain in a moment.

Pikachu's Vacation:

Pikachu's Vacation was semi-entertaining, but I wanted it to be over very quickly.  Almost
the entire thing has quite obviously been changed from the original.  Well, the audio has,
at least.  Somehow I doubt the Japanese had the original short backed by a soundtrack that
consisted of the bubblegum pop stylings of Christina Aguilera.  The plot of the short was
simple enough; Pikachu, Bulbasaur, and Squirtle are dropped off at some PokeMon resort 
island, along with the baby PokeMon, Tokapi.  They end up getting in a little scuffle with
another little gang of PokeMon, consisting of Raichu, Mabull, Merril, and Q-bone (I know, 
the names mean nothing to you, but I figured I'd at least mention the characters).  Then
they get into various competitions, and in the end they have to work together, and they 
become friends.  Aww.

What bugged me about it was the little mini acid flashbacks throughout the whole thing.  
Between shots -Not even between SCENES, mind you- they would break away to shots of trippy
little backgrounds with various PokeMon moving with a slow rhythm across the screen, in a
repeating pattern, with weird music in the background and someone saying their name along
with the rhythm.  They're all different, and they're all bizzare.

And now finally I present a review for the movie itself.  I know, this is quite possibly 
the longest movie reviews I've ever written, for a rather mediocre movie.  But trust me, 
the Episode One review I almost wrote was three times this long.  But I digress.  

PokeMon: The First Movie

The plot is pretty simple.  I mean come on, it's only an hour long.  A team of scientists
find DNA from a species of PokeMon that is believed to be extinct, known as Mew.  They make
an uber-clone with a convenient carrying handle on the back of his head (see the film and 
you will understand), known as Mewtwo.  Mewtwo doesn't like the idea that he was created in
a lab,so he destroys the lab, then rebuilds it (apparently) to his own liking.  Then he 
decides to declare himself the greatest PokeMon master of all time, and begins making his 
army of PokeMon uber-clones.  And of course, our friends from the series, Ash, Brock, and 
Misty are called (along with other PokeMon trainers) to do battle with Mewtwo and his Poke-
Clones.

There is a lot that you just have to look past in this film.  I mean a LOT.  Like, if 
Mewtwo wants to destroy all PokeMon and all Humans, why does he bother calling the trainers
to New Island?  And they introduce some mystic in the beginning who tells all the trainers
abotu some great legend, and then we find that only a minute fraction of the legend has 
ANYTHING at all to do with the plot.  And then little non-plot related items that bugged 
me, like how Mewtwo was supposedly this God amongst PokeMon, with his amazing psychic power,
but all we ever see him do until the very end is make a shield, and lift things.  It got
really old watching anyone who challenged him get thrown across the room.  The first few
times, it was pretty spiffy; but after a half hour of nothing but throwing people across 
the room, it got old.

But a lot in this movie was just plain cool, if you're an Anime fan.  Nothing new or exiting
or revolutionary, but cool in more of a classic-style-we-all-know-and-love way.  Mewtwo 
blowing things up with a large glowing ball of psychic energy, cheesy voice-overs, over-
dramatic action scenes, etc.  And the movie wasn't ALL that bad, just really cheesy.  We
saw lots of PokeMon battles, and some cool original-versus-clone battles, like when Chari-
zard got his ass kicked by UberClone Charizard.  The film wasn't Saving Private Ryan, nor 
was it American Beauty.  Hell, this wasn't even Army of Darkness.  But for a kids' movie, 
it was pretty entertaining.  I'm not even going to bother with a C.H.A.O.S. Chart for this
movie because, well...I'm just that lazy.

I give it 5 out of 10 kumquats.  A masterpeice in mediocrity.  Not something I recommend 
everyone rush out and see, I'm just letting you all know that if your kids, siblings, or
neices and nephew drag your sorry ass to see it, it's not nearly as bad as many people are
saying it is.

On a final note, I'd like to say why I find Pikachu the funniest of all PokeMon.  As you 
may or may not know, the only way PokeMon speak is by saying their own name.  And granted,
this is more of a joke you have to HEAR, maybe I can get this stuck in your head when you
see the film.  Pikachu talks by saying stuff like "Pika...pikapika..pikaCHU!"  And "Pika",
when spoken, sounds identical to the psychological term, Pica.  For those not well-versed
in the DSM-IV, "pica" refers to the habit of playing with and/or eating one's own fecal
matter.  So as they say, "put that in your pipe and smoke it".