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Pokemon the Movie 2000 Movie Review

Pokemon the Movie 2000 is a 1999 animated fantasy adventure film directed by Kunihiko Yuyama. It’s a pretty much similar movie in quality to its predecessor.

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“It’s times like these that I wish I had been named Bob“

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A Pokemon collector captures the legendary birds in his quest for power, which causes chaos. Ash and his team seek to restore order in the world before a disaster of apocalyptic proportions strikes. The original film continues to be trashed by critics and fans, but to me the two movies are rather similar in quality and I maybe even prefer the original because this one was much less darker and less intriguing.

These Pokemon movies were clearly made with one intention only – to promote the legendary Pokemon of each new generation. As a result, they didn’t quite care for the quality of the scripts, which ended up being quite the same most of the time – they are always taking our heroes on an adventure to meet and rescue these legendary creatures. But the adventurous elements are just not as strong, so this movie ended up being only serviceable.

Lawrence III is a forgettable villain and most of the human characters got the short end of the stick here in terms of any actual screen time or arcs. Ash getting to be the chosen one was quite tiresome while Pikachu himself unfortunately got a much reduced role in comparison to its predecessor. Tracey and Melody are uninteresting.

Team Rocket stole the movie for me as expected. Their arc is actually different this time around as they genuinely try to be good guys. That speech about their intention was hilarious and amusingly different while still sticking to their formula. Lugia is solidly realized here and the same goes for the other legendary birds, but more could have been done with the other Pokemon.

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Pokemon the Movie 2000 has a bit better animation than before, though it’s still quite cheap and unpolished. The soundtrack is once again very good with the final songs during the end-credits being quite memorable. The movie’s dialogue is cheesy, but it works for a kids flick. I liked this flick and it’s fun enough and charming, but missing here was that one emotional sequence or that inherent darkness that the original had.