Synopsis
Fura City is celebrating their annual Wind Festival. On the final day legendary Pokémon Lugia bestows the blessing of the wind upon the people.
Review
This is the first Pokémon movie that I've seen, I'm not quite sure of what the normal running of a show is but everything about its set up was strange.
Firstly there weren't any adverts for children at all, which is unusual for a PG film. The ads were followed by a couple of trailers, including some manga, and then the movie's title card. Yay movie time! Wait, no. Then there were some Pokémon adverts, followed by two episodes of Pokémon Generations and a mini documentary before the main presentation. Is that how it normally goes? Because it was madness.
The documentary was interesting, although it would have made more sense if it had been shown before any of the animation. When the first two cartoons came on the kids were super excited, but their attention was lost when it switched to the real life footage and they all instantly became restless and uninterested for the actual film.
That whole experience really felt like there's little understanding of who their audience actually is. Are they going for the adult nerdy crowd or kids? Whichever it is, I feel this format was the reason a third of the audience left before the end of the film.
City is great. City is in trouble. City comes together to fix everything. It's a simple story. It's making friends of strangers and a sense of community and there are a lot of teachable moments about honesty and values. That's all very nice but as an adult it becomes a little tiresome to watch.
As a style I enjoy the illustration used. It's a clean design that really allows characters to have a surprising array of expression. I always think that the generated animation sticks out like a sore thumb from the rest. That's in all animated films not just this one. The fast sweeping motions become unnatural.
My main query is about Pokémon in general. How sensible is it to have them battling in the streets of a city? One went on a rampage... a rampage... in a city full of people! What is this madness?!
Damn it if those little buggers aren't adorable though. Pikachu playing in the fountains and then with Eevee, these little creatures are just glorified puppies and I love it. But why on earth do they just keep saying their names? Whatever the reason, I like to think that it's partly to do with hiding their sarcasm.
Apart from our little Poké-friends we get a whole host of characters. I know about Team Rocket, what I'm not sure about is why they're the go to "villains". This movie had two perfectly good alternatives but it went with the comic relief. As I said above, this film has a lot of teachable moments and most of them come through the wide range of characters. We've got a compulsive liar, a girl struggling through an injury, a scientist with severe anxiety, and people hiding the past for one reason or another. There's a lot happening.
The individual parts of the story do feel a little strange, but once the characters start meeting each other properly the whole thing becomes more entertaining. I may never understand however why everyone just agrees to let Ash help. That plot point seems completely barmy to me.
*climbs on soap box* Sudowoodo is the best and you all know it. End of review.
What you should do
If you've watched more than one Pokémon then you're probably going to watch it regardless of what I say. It passed the time reasonably well so I'd say take a look at it sometime, but possibly not at the cinema if you're taking younger kids.
Movie thing you wish you could take home
It's got to be a Pokémon hasn't it? But which one? I'm not really sure I'm able to make that choice.
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