They stop being cute when they grow up

COURTESY POKEMONTHEMOVIE.COM Brock, Misty, Ash, and Pikachu set sail for a sad spectacle

From its multi-tiered title onward, it should be apparent that Pokémon: The First Movie: Mewtwo Strikes Back will collapse under its own overstuffed dumbness. Which is a shame, because for a while, the TV show that spawned this film carried its idiocy with surprising charm. In the realm of imported Japanese TV cartoons, Pokémon is the closest that crap has gotten this decade to becoming a diamond.

True, the show is based on the same hybrid of sales pitches and ham-handed moral homilies that has been the foundation of kids' cartoons for decades. However, Pokémon's universe of fighting pets has such ticklish appeal that one can't help but forgive the occasional moral to get to the good stuff. Pikachu, the electric-squirrel thing that serves as the franchise's official mascot, is the culmination of the Manhattan Project in cuteness, which has been going on in Japan since the development of Hello Kitty. Like every animal character on the show, it communicates only by offering various intonations of its name—which, if you haven't seen the seven basic emotions conveyed with the word "Squirtle" before, is something beautiful.

Pokémon: The First Movie retains these qualities, but regrettably dispenses with the show's frothy lightheartedness. On TV, human characters Ash, Brock, and Misty exist only to lead us to some new creature, which then charms our pants off for a half-hour. The film places these three cyphers in the position of actually defending this universe instead of exploring it, which unbalances the film to begin with. Add to this the fact that the movie's title character is probably the grimmest telekinetic humanoid cat ever genetically tube-grown in a lab, and you have a film with serious tonal problems.

His voice emanating in Dolby Stereo from the back of the theater, Mewtwo blows up the scientists who created him, then starts asking questions like "Why am I here?" He settles on scouring the earth clean with a storm, the first of a couple of weird religious references. First, though, he invites a batch of Poké-mon trainers, including the series' stars, to his island so he can kick the crap out of them with a squad of clones and then rant about how humans are jerks.

The entire conflict is resolved when everyone arrives at the revelation that Fighting Is Wrong, a ridiculously dissonant lesson in a world where everyone's raison d'être is getting weird animals to fight. The filmmaker's desire for something bigger, something more movie-worthy, disrupts the delicate equilibrium that the TV show hitherto maintained. It's too big for its britches, and despite the cameo efforts of the series' three buffoonish stock villains, there are few enjoyable moments.

The movie's storytelling and design are as awkward as its storyline. Some of Pokémon's settings are pulled straight from the slime, tentacles, and metal armor school of animé design. Other moments, such as the scene transitions in the "Pikachu's Vacation" short which precedes the main feature, are cartoonishly psychedelic.

This short, incidentally, is equally bad; removed from their (however meager) relations to humans, the Pokémon have nothing better to do than poorly imitate the opening cartoon from Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Featuring endless lineup shots of adorable cartoon creatures, the short goes as far astray in the marketing department as the feature does with grimness. But the film's final bullet in its own foot is its mawkish background songs, which include an awful late-'80s sounding guitar ballad that plays during a climactic battle sequence. Pokémon: the First Movie is a tale told by idiots who can't decide whether to entertain, terrify, or try to sell one more electric squirrel-thing.

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