Pokemon 4Ever
Our story begins with a boy named Sammy (Tara Sands) walking to the entrance of a forest. A lady nearby warns Sammy that if he hears, what they call, "the voice of the forest" that he should stand completely still or it will take him through time. She also gives him a sandwich. Sammy enters the forest and begins drawing some Pokemon he finds. He then notices that a Scyther and Houndoom are holding a Pokemon down. This Pokemon is known as Celebi. A Pokemon Hunter (Madeleine Blaustein) arrives and informs Sammy that he collects rare Pokemon and auctions them off. He wants that Celebi and is willing to do anything to get it. So Sammy frees Celebi and runs off with it. Celebi then uses it's mystical ability to travel through time. Then we jump ahead 40 years where we see that the Pokemon Hunter is being attacked by a new villain. This man is known as The Iron Masked Marauder (Dan Green), a legendary member of Team Rocket, and he wants to know everything that the Hunter knows about Celebi. He won't talk, so the Marauder takes him outside to show off his own technology. He frees a trapped Tyranitar and uses his new technology, known as a dark ball, to capture it. He explains that the dark ball can capture any Pokemon and automatically grow them to their strongest power. He demonstrates this by having his Tyranitar completely destroy the Hunter's house. The Hunter agrees to talk and we cut to our main hero, Ash Ketchum (Veronica Taylor). He's battling a trainer and quickly finishes it. He then runs off to try and catch the ferry he was supposed to get on. Luckily, there was a nearby dock that he can jump from so that his friends Misty (Rachael Lillis) and Brock (Eric Stuart) can catch him. Then a man on the boat tells the three about a forest near where he lives. He agrees to take them there. After their conversation, Ash and the gang notice a Pokemon in the distance, but it quickly runs away. They find out that the Pokemon they saw was another legendary, like Celebi, known as Suicune. Once there, Ash and the gang travel into the forrest, but not before meeting a nearby old lady and her daughter, Diana (Roxanne Beck). They give them the same warning that Sammy received earlier. After going into the forest, the trees glow, and they find Sammy unconcious. They bring him back to Diana's house and Sammy wakes up. He wants to know where Celebi is, but then quickly looses energy. The old lady reveals to Sammy that she was the young girl that gave him the warning 40 years ago and she's also been saving his journal that he dropped before traveling through time. So Ash, Sammy, and the gang decide to go out and find Celebi before someone else does.
I absolutely love that this film was set in a forest. This setting is really beautiful and brings out every single detail, especially when Pokemon are interracting with it. The forest also allows for a lot more beauty to come into the film during it's climax with a giant wood creature that Celebi creates. Also, the battles in this film are what any Pokemon fan would expect. Epic. They're full of energy and a lot of fun to watch. The villain of this film, the Marauder, is also really awesome and pretty threatening, until he get's too full of himself and begins to gloat.
Now, with this being a children's film, it does have the same problems a lot of children movies have. The script is sometimes really bad. There's some really bad jokes that you'd have to be a Pokemon fan to understand. some really bad time travel jokes, and just lines that make you wonder why the writers had these characters say these things. Also, the two legendary Pokemon that this film claims to focus on, Celebi and Suicune, are hardly in it. We get a couple of glimpses of Suicune and Celebi isn't shown that much, until the Climax. Now with that out of the way, the rest of my problems have to do with the film's climax and resolution. So if you don't want any spoilers, skip down to my final thoughts. Once Celebi creates this beautiful monster made out of the surrounding trees, the Marauder reveals his real plan. It's the same plan that every villain has. Use his new powers to, you guessed it, take over the world. I don't know what it is about kid's movies where every villain wants to take over the world. Shouldn't evil villains know by now that if you set your goals that high, you're bound to mess up and fail? I guess not. How this giant beast is defeated is extremely dissapointing. What happens is Ash and Sammy climb up it with the help of Suicune. Once there, they begin to talk some sense into Celebi and it shows flashbacks of the times they spent together. The problem with these flashbacks is that the scenes begin to repeat themselves due to not many scenes actually having Celebi in them. Then comes the big dissapointment. Ash actually hugs Celebi which causes it to regain control of itself and cause the giant beast to be destroyed. They destroyed this thing with the power of love. THEY KILLED A GIANT CREATURE THAT COULD DESTROY THE ENTIRE FOREST WITH LOVE?!?!?!?! Not a Pokemon battle, not Suicune coming in and attacking celebi or the giant beast to destroy it. No. We get love to kill it. Why? Because loving a giant beast bigger than a building that could kill you in one second is the only way to kill it, or at least in the Pokemon world it is. Also, during this battle, the Pokemon begin to call out to Celebi. But this does nothing but annoy the viewer because it's just noise. Random, annoying, noise. Once the beast is completely destroyed, we get introduced to a major plothole in the story. Celebi dies and is unable to come back to life. So what happens to bring it back? A hole appears out of nowhere and hundreds of Celebi from the past and future come to heal it. HOW THE HELL DOES THIS WORK?!?!?! First off, Celebi is a legendary, which means that there's only one of it's kind. So where did these other Celebi come from? Are they clones? Are they from a different planet? Never answered. Second, how can there be future Celebi if the one in the present is dead? It doesn't make any sense. Another problem with Celebi's death is how the film tries to make us feel sad for it dying when little to no character development was given to Celebi. In fact, there was no character development with anyone in this film, Sammy didn't develop, the Marauder didn't develop, Celebi and Suicune didn't develop. No one developed. They were all just really flat characters that just did stuff. So how can we feel sad when a flat character dies? They have this sad violin music play which sounds like it's just hammering in that we're supposed to be upset that it died.
So is this film worth seeing? If you're a Pokemon fan, then yes. This movie really doesn't try to please anyone else except the fans. It just leaves parents and those that either aren't into Pokemon or those that came because it looked interesting and know nothing of Pokemon out to be confused. But for the fans of the series, this is one that they should definitley see.
I absolutely love that this film was set in a forest. This setting is really beautiful and brings out every single detail, especially when Pokemon are interracting with it. The forest also allows for a lot more beauty to come into the film during it's climax with a giant wood creature that Celebi creates. Also, the battles in this film are what any Pokemon fan would expect. Epic. They're full of energy and a lot of fun to watch. The villain of this film, the Marauder, is also really awesome and pretty threatening, until he get's too full of himself and begins to gloat.
Now, with this being a children's film, it does have the same problems a lot of children movies have. The script is sometimes really bad. There's some really bad jokes that you'd have to be a Pokemon fan to understand. some really bad time travel jokes, and just lines that make you wonder why the writers had these characters say these things. Also, the two legendary Pokemon that this film claims to focus on, Celebi and Suicune, are hardly in it. We get a couple of glimpses of Suicune and Celebi isn't shown that much, until the Climax. Now with that out of the way, the rest of my problems have to do with the film's climax and resolution. So if you don't want any spoilers, skip down to my final thoughts. Once Celebi creates this beautiful monster made out of the surrounding trees, the Marauder reveals his real plan. It's the same plan that every villain has. Use his new powers to, you guessed it, take over the world. I don't know what it is about kid's movies where every villain wants to take over the world. Shouldn't evil villains know by now that if you set your goals that high, you're bound to mess up and fail? I guess not. How this giant beast is defeated is extremely dissapointing. What happens is Ash and Sammy climb up it with the help of Suicune. Once there, they begin to talk some sense into Celebi and it shows flashbacks of the times they spent together. The problem with these flashbacks is that the scenes begin to repeat themselves due to not many scenes actually having Celebi in them. Then comes the big dissapointment. Ash actually hugs Celebi which causes it to regain control of itself and cause the giant beast to be destroyed. They destroyed this thing with the power of love. THEY KILLED A GIANT CREATURE THAT COULD DESTROY THE ENTIRE FOREST WITH LOVE?!?!?!?! Not a Pokemon battle, not Suicune coming in and attacking celebi or the giant beast to destroy it. No. We get love to kill it. Why? Because loving a giant beast bigger than a building that could kill you in one second is the only way to kill it, or at least in the Pokemon world it is. Also, during this battle, the Pokemon begin to call out to Celebi. But this does nothing but annoy the viewer because it's just noise. Random, annoying, noise. Once the beast is completely destroyed, we get introduced to a major plothole in the story. Celebi dies and is unable to come back to life. So what happens to bring it back? A hole appears out of nowhere and hundreds of Celebi from the past and future come to heal it. HOW THE HELL DOES THIS WORK?!?!?! First off, Celebi is a legendary, which means that there's only one of it's kind. So where did these other Celebi come from? Are they clones? Are they from a different planet? Never answered. Second, how can there be future Celebi if the one in the present is dead? It doesn't make any sense. Another problem with Celebi's death is how the film tries to make us feel sad for it dying when little to no character development was given to Celebi. In fact, there was no character development with anyone in this film, Sammy didn't develop, the Marauder didn't develop, Celebi and Suicune didn't develop. No one developed. They were all just really flat characters that just did stuff. So how can we feel sad when a flat character dies? They have this sad violin music play which sounds like it's just hammering in that we're supposed to be upset that it died.
So is this film worth seeing? If you're a Pokemon fan, then yes. This movie really doesn't try to please anyone else except the fans. It just leaves parents and those that either aren't into Pokemon or those that came because it looked interesting and know nothing of Pokemon out to be confused. But for the fans of the series, this is one that they should definitley see.