Pokémon is back! Time to revisit the hypest movie of my childhood.

What’s It About? When the bio-engineered Pokémon Mewtwo escapes from its lab, it’s up to the young adventurer Ash and his friends to contain it before its power threatens the whole world.

STRAIGHT UP: Leave the memories alone. 0.5/5

What I Liked

Ikue Ohtani as Pikachu – Despite being limited to just three syllables, Ohtani’s performance conveys some depth and emotion. Vin Diesel must have learned a thing or two from her…

Mewtwo’s origin – The opening scene is kind of awesome in a 1950’s mad-science thriller kind of way. If the rest of the movie had kept the same schlocky themes and tone, it might have actually had some lasting entertainment value.

What I Disliked

Pokémon are annoying – Pikachu only being able to say its own name is cute and endearing, but every Pokémon having the same vocabulary is too much for me to tolerate. It’s also embarrassing anytime Ash or Mewtwo (who can speak normally) have “dialogue” with a Pokémon – with so much interpreting and rephrasing going on, they may as well be conversing with themselves.

QUALITY animation – Even for its time, the animation in this film isn’t up to par. There are so many scenes of one or two characters moving against a still background. The choreography is unimaginative and indistinct – when Pokémon fight, they just sort of bump into each other and wrestle a little bit. And there aren’t really any scenes of extended action, which means the budget wasn’t being saved so that it could go anywhere.

The lowest form of humor – Movies with this many groaner puns in them shouldn’t be legal.

Mewtwo’s motivations – This is where I really started to realize how little any of the creators cared about making this movie. Mewtwo is upset about being a clone and being asked to do others’ bidding, so its evil plan involves… cloning powerful Pokémon and asking them to do its bidding? It’s not too much to ask for basic character consistency, even in a kids’ movie.

Exclusively for fans – This movie doesn’t even bother catering to anyone who isn’t already a Pokémon fan. The marquee clash between Mew and Mewtwo isn’t even set up very well, so without a baked-in understanding of why it’s supposed to be awesome, newcomers will see the whole thing as Mewtwo freaking out at this cute thing for no reason.

Preachy and trite – The last 15 minutes or so feature multiple scenes of characters straight-up telling the audience the moral of the story. It’s heavy-handed and insulting. Not only that, it’s not even an interesting moral. Not only that, it’s not even a good fit for the material. “Fighting is bad,” says the movie based on a game about magical animals fighting each other.

Ash turns to stone – Some people compare this scene to the death of Optimus Prime in Transformers: The Movie (1986). I’m here to tell you that Optimus’ death is way more intense because it has lasting consequences and comes as a total surprise, while Ash is revived after two minutes and a bit of foreshadowing so blatant, you’d have to be asleep to miss it.

CLOSING THOUGHT: I should note that I am by no means a Pokémon hater – I think the original games are brilliantly designed and hold up well even today. But this movie wasn’t made with the same love and care as those games; in fact, it’s such a naked cash-grab that I was honestly shocked. There are infinitely better stories for children out there, even within the Pokémon franchise itself; up-and-coming Pokémon Trainers and hardcore nostalgia-hunters alike should avoid this one.