Pokémon The Movie: I Choose You! **
Dir: Yuyama Kunihiko. Animation with the voices of: Sarah
Natochenny, Ikue Otani, Carter Cathcart, Michele Knotz. 98 mins. Cert: U
The – get this – twentieth feature-length promotional tool for
the media-spanning collectibles phenomenon turns out to be a reboot of the
series entire. We are here returned to the very first meeting between
10-year-old Everykid Ash and totemic cat-bug-baby creature Pikachu, thereby
allowing the rules of the game to be explained to a whole new generation with
disposable income to squander. As rebranding exercises cinemagoers are expected
to underwrite go, I Choose You! forms
a modest improvement on those headachy spinoffs that bedevilled the world
around the last millennium. Though the Poké-matches become repetitive,
relying heavily on generic, TV-standard animation, occasional flourishes (some
black-and-white backstory, a computer-assisted bad dream) suggest those responsible
may someday make art once they’re done bolstering a leisure conglomerate’s
stock options.
Beyond these sidebars, it’s
business as usual. The new movie preserves that Hello Kitty-ish cuteness built
into the franchise from the get-go, whether in Pikachu’s chittering or the
message about looking after your pocket monsters (unlike those Team Rocket
nogoodniks). You don’t, however, have to look long and hard to spot the
insidious corporatethink slipped in alongside it. “Being a second late for a
Pokémon can be lifechanging,” lectures one father figure – so, you know,
consume early and often, kids. Even the quest New Ash is sent on points towards
an ungainly winged collectible, the questionably named Ho-Oh, which is surely
now appearing in very limited packs of trading cards. One of Ash’s
contemporaries describes his encounter with this rainbow-hued bird as “a priceless
experience”. Two decades’ worth of vanished, irretrievable pocket money would
say otherwise.
Pokémon The Movie: I Choose You! shows in cinemas nationwide this Sunday and Monday.
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