Previously: Pokemon 3: :

At the risk of pissing off everyone under the age of 10 in America, this movie sucked so bad it almost comparatively eases the pain of electing a second guy named Bush to the presidency who is even a bigger moron than the first one. If this movie had introduced a new line of superheroes to Americas children, the associated action figures would be in the Kaybee clearance bin by next week.

Im probably not even revealing anything unknown to the movie going public. This film was released on Wednesday, and even the kids are already staying away in droves. I remember what the theaters were like for the first couple of weeks after the release of the first two Pokemon films. You couldnt take two steps without squishing some little yard ape. Today, you could have fire canons in the lobby of the theater without endangering anyone.

Suddenly Im starting to get some unique insights as to why every successive generation of young people in America seems generally more screwed up than the previous one. The answer has to lie in the movies we show them as children. I remember this movie I saw once about a nanny. She went around butting her nose into dysfunctional families, generally making the situation worse. She cost the head of the household his job, apparently slipped some sort of hallucinogenic substances into the food or drink of the children that caused them to have all sorts of fantasy adventures, used cheap parlor magic to further confuse the hell out of her charges, and zipped around with a flying umbrella. Now that is some twisted shit.

There was another one I remember about this lady that runs off into the woods and lives with seven little guys in a one room cottage. If that wasnt sick enough in itself, she eventually dumps the lot of them and runs off with some character named Prince Charming. Now, I cant say for sure, but I cant help but wonder if this isnt the same Prince Charming that also wooed Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and a few others. Maybe it was just a few successive generations of the Charming family, but since I never heard any stories about King Charming, Ive got to think it was one guy who got around a bit. So we teach our children about women running off to live with seven guys, and the ideal fantasy man of every little girls dreams is a guy that jumps at every pretty number in a skirt.

There was one of even more recent vintage about a mermaid that falls in love with a human, or the one about the pretty girl that falls in love with a hideous man-beast. Look, promiscuity is bad enough, but Disney et. al. are jumping the fence into the realms of miscogeny and beastiality. We have the heads of studios that we charge with the duty of entertaining our children dumping out subject matter like this, then we actually have the gall to get worked up when someone spots a tower in the background animation that looks like a penis or something. It rather seems to me we have better fish to fry here.

Up until now, I considered Pokemon to be one of the more innocent forays into the psychological destruction of our children. For the most part, its reasonably non-violent, at least by comparison to a lot of the superhero type fare. But the plot of the new Pokemon 3 was right out of the Twilight Zone. I mean that almost literally. This movie essentially was an extended Twilight Zone episode.

A little girl, Molly, inherits a large castle, following the disappearance of her mother, and father. The latter happened to be a famed Pokemon researcher. A strange group of new Pokemon, the unown, show up at her place one day, apparently the efforts of her fathers research. The new Pokemon, who appear to be refugees from a can of Japanese alphabet soup, have the power to create the little girls dream world. Thus the castle and surrounding city are transformed into a giant crystalline structure. A Pokemon named Entimon, or something like that, appears, and assumes the role of the little girls father. The girl wants a mother too, so Entimon goes out and steals her one. As luck would have it, it happens to be Ashs mother.

Naturally, the movie centers around the efforts of Ash and company to rescue his mother, while the little girls fantasies quash their efforts. The heroes are able to save the day only when they are ultimately able to persuade the little girl that the world of reality is superior to that of her fantasies. But the strange new Pokemon have taken on a life of their own, and Entimon must ultimately destroy them to save the day.

After the new Pokemon are vanquished, the little girls father reappears in some sort of basement vault. If you leave the film without watching the closing credits, you are probably going to assume that he dies down there too. But this is a kids movie, and you should have been patient enough to stick around. Not only do the disjointed closing scenes reveal that the father and little girl are reunited at a joyous picnic, but her lost mother is there as well. I dont have the first clue as to how the producers pulled her out of their asses, or even how she disappeared in the first place. I guess I have to remind myself it was a childrens movie, but very little of it made a damned bit of sense.

I really think that even most ardent Pokemon fans are going to be disappointed in this one. On the plus side, Brock was along this time, and he is always a welcome sight in Pokemon adventures. I personally like Brock. Hes pretty much of a shameless horndog. Team Rocket was as close to invisible in this movie as could possibly be pulled off without completely drawing the ire of Pokemon faithful. They were in the movie, but had so little to do that their presence seemed almost an afterthought. They didnt even recite the infamous Team Rocket Creed, which is pretty much a crime against nature. Im almost ashamed to admit that I have that little ditty committed to memory.

Whether the people who bring us Pokemon just cheaped it out and rested on their laurels, or the license is just running out of steam is hard to say. But if there is going to be a Pokemon 4, they are going to have to do better.

Okay, Im being cranky here, but I really am glad that there was a more innocent time in the history of filmmaking. If The Wizard Of Oz were remade in 2001, I suspect that Dorothy, upon learning that she isnt in Kansas anymore, would pass around the crack pipe and have a serious orgy with Glenda and the munchkins. The adventure would only deteriorate further when she met three interesting guys, each with a respective wish to complete their character. Forget about brains, a heart or courage. We are talking, respectively, a boatload of beer, nine inches and some serious cash.