Pokemon the Movie: I Choose You

No matter what I might think of the film, gotta admit this poster is great.

Despite majoring in film I do not watch many films, instead preferring television over feature-length productions. So I figured a new year was a good excuse to o expand my movie-viewing habits. The goal is to watch 100 films for the first time before the end of 2019, analyzing each as I progress. So the first film I watched this year was Pokemon the Movie: I Choose You. I have wanted to check this movie out for quite some time and since it was recently added to Netflix it was now easily accessible.

A thematic reimagining of the beginning of Ash's journey to celebrate the anime's 20th anniversary is interesting and sounds like a fun way of turning the familiar origin on it's head in an entertaining way. Instead the film half-steps in delivering a new version by relying too heavily on reliving story lines from the original series ,like Ash freeing Butterfree and Charmander's abandonment. This undercuts the new characters/story elements by not giving them enough screentime. The way Ash meets the film's two new companions, Verity and Sorrel, is fun but neither characters gets much development or personality so end up feeling fairly dull.

That feeling when no one in your party has Mean Look.

On a positive note the film is beautifully animated, sporting some well-done fight scenes with every battle with Cross, the new rival, being a highlight in that regard. Entei's prominent appearance in the first act was surprising but welcomed as his status as a Legendary Pokemon was well showcased. Sadly his counterparts don't get the same treatment, with Suicune only getting a brief encounter with Verity and Raikou being little more than a cameo. It was also disappointing that they didn't come back in the film's climax despite how poised the opportunity for a final reappearance of the trio was. Not having the Legendary Dogs interact with Ho-Oh on screen was a major missed opportunity.

Missed opportunity is the best way to describe Pokemon the Movie: I Choose You. A solid concept that failed to fully commit to being different from the original series while the new elements it did introduced felt mostly under-baked. It also does not help that the movie's central message of treasuring friendship over power is the same theme that many of the previous films and seasons of the anime have covered, with multiple of the past efforts being more successful in delivering the message while remaining entertaining. While I would not classify this film as a bad experience it certainly was a bland one.