El Cosmico here, good day, citizens, our pal Fast Eddie Bax has endured the Pokemon 2000 experience, which I haven't yet had a chance to enjoy myself. Now, see for yourself, the glory that is Pokemon:
I woke up last Saturday after 4 hours sleep, and faced the screening of Pokemon:2000. I was ready to be disturbed by the film, but not for what I actually saw: something like 200 kids in a theater meant for about 100. Running, screaming, shouting children and their disturbingly indifferent parents arguing with an enraged manager and 3 or 4 poor ushers who seemed to be reduced to just shouting the words "Fire Code". They spent 20 minutes clearing half the people out of there, and it was way too surreal to watch ushers march scores of sniveling children down the long stairs and out the door without so much as an "Ancient Mew" card. In the end, it was too much to bear. I saw a mother who was crouched down behind the back row with her two kids, hiding from the theater manager. Agent K and I gave our seats to them and got the hell out of there. I caught the midnight show last night instead, and enjoyed a much different crowd. Just me, Agent K, a bottle of sake and 6 teenagers, giggling in the back row.
It's hard to objectively review a big screen extension of a TV show. If you like Pokemon, you'll think about seeing it, and if you hate it, you won't, and that's that. That said - Christ, do I love Pokemon. Seeing my first episode, hung over and bleary-eyed on a Saturday morning, was like waking up on some sort of potent new hallucinogen that turned innocent Saturday morning cartoons into a frightening madhouse of violent, jabbering space-vermin. I harassed all of my friends until they tuned in to this nightmare world of confusion, and they were all hooked too, one at a time. Insane beasts who fight on behalf of their captors! Children traveling about collecting endangered animals and pitting them in combat against one another to force their evolution! Flying, two-headed, smoke blowing rocks, flowers that can whip your ass with kung fu, and singing pink marshmallows that will write on your face when you fall asleep! Hell yes! Plus it‚s choc-full-o-evil marketing genius! AND it's the only show I can think of that ACTUALLY PUT PEOPLE IN THE HOSPITAL just from watching it. Who can beat that? I can't. Not with a stick.
Pikachu's vacation - the short attached to Pokemon:The First Movie - was the pinnacle. 20 minutes of psycho-hypnotic weird, all told from the perspective of the frigging pokedex. All you could do is sit back in wonder and let the damage begin. The First Movie itself was off somehow. It was like an extended episode, but some awkward existentialism kept distracting me from the core weirdness of the film, and it got, at times, a bit heavy and sinister for younger kids. Especially the bits with the evil Poke-clones. Eeeych.
Like The First Movie, Pokemon 2000 (or The Power Of One) is another long episode of the show. This time the tone is kept light for the kids. The opening bit, Pikachu's Rescue Adventure, is another bizarre pokemon-only short, which results in 20 minutes of dialogue where the characters just say their names over and over again, with occasional bad puns from the talking cat thrown in to ground you back in reality. It's like that the bit where John Malkovich goes through the portal into his own mind, only involving groups of cracked, bouncing eggs and a strange, aggressive AC adapter.
The plot of the main film involves a collector in a propeller-driven prototype of the comet empire attempting to collect three legendary Pokemon birds with flying geometric shapes. The three Pokemon hold nature's balance in check, apparently just by minding their own business, but when they are captured violent winds and 20 second snowstorms strafe the globe. The collector hopes that this imbalance will unleash the beast of the sea, another rare Pokemon (who, for no good reason, kept reminding me of James Woods) so that he can collect it as well. Ash, his two useless cohorts, and a 10 year old girl who owns a flying speedboat set about trying to collect three glass globes that will set the balance right. Team Rocket pedal around in a giant carp for no adequately explored reason. A strange dinosaur stands with a horned hat and without any pants. Weird weird weird.
Long story short: If you don't like the show, don't see the film. if you do, shake up your mental state and go. Does it make a lick of sense? No. Will I see it again? Probably not. Did I like it? Hell yes. It's utterly weird, laugh out loud freaky at times, and any feature length presentation with a dancing, screaming pineapple tree AND the line "The Pokemon sense impending doom!" is all right by me.
Fast Eddie Bax
