I saw Pokemon: The First Movie last night.

Long review short: Pokemon are the work of Satan.

Maybe I should start at the beginning.

It was around the beginning of October when I first noticed this weird little yellow bunny all over the place.

(The "weird little bunny" is actually Pikachu, an electric mouse type Pokemon that will evolve into Raichu with the use of the Thunder Stone. Imagine rubbing your cat on the carpet for a few hours and then touching your sister with it. It's like that except cute.)

Upon further investigation, I noticed it was called a Poke Man.

"Poke man," I thought, "That's silly."

I turned to a frantic, glassy-eyed youth next to me, tearing through the Poke Men like he was digging for survivors in a Korean department store.

"Hey, you like the Poke men?" I asked.

The kid turned to me with a kind of primitive blood lust in his eyes that I hadn't seen since Robin Williams came back from the jungle in Jumanji.

"Not 'Poke Man,' retard! It's 'Poke-ay-mon!' It's Japanese for 'Pocket Monster!'"

"Hmmm," I thought. "Japanese is easy. Like contractions. This kid is screwed up. I wonder what evil kind of Tickle-Me-Elmo brainwashing has done this?"

(That kid turned out to be my new best friend Billy Henderson. He's got a level 85 Ivysaur that can knock the stink off a hobo. I traded him my Clefairy and he evolved it into a Clefable in like four minutes! The kid's a genius... his mom said I can't hang out with him anymore.)

Now my curiosity was pika-PIKA PIKA PIKA!... er... curiosity was piqued.

I suspected that something evil was afoot.

Something that needed to be stopped by good, law abiding folk like myself.

Something that might be good for a lame misinformer.com feature at the very least.

A friend of mine has been into this whole Pokemon thing since the beginning. I asked her to bring me up to speed on it.

"Watch these episodes of the TV show," she said, as the sage-like Pokemon master that she is. "They'll show you everything that you need to know."

So I mixed up a couple of pina coladas, popped the tape into the VCR, and took the first step on my Pokemon journey.

Okay, there's Ash Ketchum, our hero. His bedroom is just LOADED with Pokemon stuff. I mean, this kid makes the PokeMart at Sears look meaningless and insignificant by comparison.

"Is this a brilliant touch of self-awareness on the part of the producers, to make Ash's room look like the rooms of the kids they are peddling to, or is this just a lame piece of self-advertising like the gift shop in the visitor center in Jurassic Park, where you can see the stuff you can buy after the movie is over? This sucks."

(God! I LOVE this show! I watch it twice a day, everyday! It's the best animated kids show since the first season of Tiny Toon Adventures. It rocks my world. I so want a Voltorb alarm clock just like the one that Ash has.)

In this episode Ash turns ten years old and is finally allowed to fulfill his lifelong dream of wandering from town to town gathering wild animals and teaching them to claw each other's eyes out.

This seemed strange to me. To engage in feral animal fighting competitions is one thing, but to do it without adult supervision?

I called my chief researcher.

"Mom," I asked, "did I leave the house when I was ten years old to capture wild Pokemon and make them brawl Fight Club style until one passed out from internal injuries?"

"You would never make cute little animals fight," Mom said. "You didn't leave the house until you were twenty-two years old, and that was only to become an art school fag."

Indeed. She was absolutely right. Er, about the fighting, that is.

What kind of sick strange person comes up with a video game/TV show/breakfast cereal that in a nutshell amounts to Hello Kitty Cock Fighting?

The American people need to stage a boycott of Nintendo of America and they need to do it NOW! This sort of thing may be all right in Japan, but Japanese people are weird.

Really. There's documented evidence.

(I went out and bought a "kiwi" colored Game Boy and Pokemon Red last weekend. It's cute. With the red cartridge in the green console it looks like a big 'ol martini olive. Anyway, I've never had a game console before of any kind in my life. Not a Nintendo 64 or a Playstation. Not even an old 8-bit Nintendo or an Atari in any form. No Intellivision or Turbographix 16. No nothin'.

Then again, there's never been a game like Pokemon.

The Gameboy is cool, but they're so tiny these days that my hands start to really cramp up after I play for five or six continuous hours. Still, my Squirtle can tear a hole clean through a Rattata with a single bubble attack, so it was all worth it.)

And then, as if the bloodsport wasn't enough, after a particularly gruesome battle where the one they call "Harmander" blows fire all over a herd of docile tree type Pokemon, the silly thing EVOLVES!

Yes, that's right my brothers and sisters. Not only do they battle tooth and nail to the bloody end, but they also partake in the blasphemous act of evilution.

If there was such a thing as a Golduck, you had better just believe you me that it sprung from the ground fully formed as a Golduck, not that it evolved from a Psyduck.

Unless you think that we all came from monkeys and worms.

Heathen.

(So I had this stupid Kakuna for like seventy-five battles in a row, and the stupid thing has no attacks except for "harden." All it does is sit there and harden all day while the Caterpies and Pidgeys of the world stomp its firm little carcass into the sand.

Well, finally the moment that I've been waiting for occurs. The Kakuna evolves into a Poison Bug type Beedrill.

A Beedrill whose only attack is "harden."

Stupid Beedrill! I should trade it for a sandwich.)

Anyway, I went to see Pokemon: The First Movie.

It sounds like a threat, doesn't it?

"That's right folks, watch for Pokemon: The Second Movie this Christmas."

It's actually more of a promise than a threat. As one informative moppet outside the theater told me, "Ash can't die in this one, because in China they already made another one and Ash is in that one so he can't die. They just made this one in American, but in China they have more."

(Why is everybody so up in arms about the title "The First Movie"?

Lemme get this straight, it's a 98-cent re-dub of an existing Japanese movie that is going to gross ninety-seven bajillion dollars in America.

Now I'm no marketing genius, but I'd say you can bet your sweet Arbok there's going to be another, and another, and on and on until the kids move on to the next big thing.

I mean, jeez, nobody got all uptight about the title Doug's First Movie.)

Because the movie has an insanely short running time (something like sixteen minutes or so), it is being shown with the short film Pikachu's Vacation.

Whoa.

If you can get your hands on some good acid before the show, do so. You won't regret it.

This is the trippiest thing that I've seen on the big screen since the hallucination scene in Dirty Work.

Yeah, I saw Dirty Work... come on, it was free... and I was probably drunk...

In the short, Pikachu, Bulbasaur, Squirtle, and all of the other super cute and highly marketable lil monsters are let loose in a special Pokemon park to run and frolic and... you know, just basically do cute stuff all over the place.

That's about it. Still, it was entertaining. It just proves that if you put seventy-five rolling Jigglypuffs across the screen in formation, you don't really need a plot.

Speaking of plot, I have a word for Nintendo, or Kids WB, or 4Kids Entertainment ("You know, 4 kids!") or whoever is responsible for the voice dub.

It would have been better without the cheeseball narration. If the stupid baby egg thing rubs its belly and cries, we know that it's hungry. You don't have to tell us.

As a general rule, this also goes for anything that Brock says. Ever.

EXT. DAYTIME
Team rocket blows up a sushi factory, causing the streets of Plaid Town to be covered in fish guts.
Jessie - The sushi factory has blown sky high.
James - We'll grab all the Pokemon and then we'll fly.
Meowth - Meowth! Whatever.
Brock - Oh no! Team Rocket has blown up the sushi factory! Now they'll steal all of the Pokemon and fly away. And Meowth said "whatever."

And then the real movie starts. The kids all go nuts. All whooping and hollering and stealing each others commemorative cards, just as their dark lord Satan told them to.

(When I went to see the movie I wore my Team Rocket costume from Halloween. I thought I was cool until kids started spitting on me and throwing rocks.

Still, I was the tallest one in the theater, so it wasn't too hard to beat them down.

Anyway, at a 9:55 PM show, they were all asleep five minutes in anyway. Jig-a-lee-puff Jig-a-leeeeeee-puuuuuuuff...)

If I had to compare my enjoyment of this movie to a phenomenon of nature, it would have to be a bird flying into a plate glass window.

"Wheeeee! This rules! I'm flyin'! I'm really flyi*PONG*!... Sqweeeeeeee..."

It starts strong. It's dark, it's brooding, it's sort of like Jurassic Park, but we'll forgive it for that.

Something goes horribly awry in a secret lab. The world's most powerful Pokemon has been genetically created, and he's super pissed that he doesn't understand why he exists or where he fits in.

Kind of Hermie the Elf from Rudolph meets Bomb 20 from Dark Star.

"If I can't be a dentist, then you ALL must PERISH IN FLAME!"

I was spellbound. I didn't expect anything like it in the movie. It's even kind of scary.

Then we cut to Ash and his friends out in a typical sunny meadow. Some dumbass guy comes out of nowhere and challenges Ash to a match, thus introducing us to his favorite Pokemon one by one and giving us all a chance to cheer for our favorite, just like at the beginning of Spice World.

And then it keeps getting better. Mewtwo (the dentist clone) starts tearing the world up for his own evil and self-defining needs, while Ash, Brock and Misty keep up with their usual shtick.

Ash - I'm going to be the greatest Pokemon Master ever. (scratch head, make giant teardrop appear over ear) A-huh-huh-huh.
Misty - You'll never be a Pokemon Master, you're too much of a dumb shit.
Brock - Ash said that he would be the greatest Pokemon Master ever, but then Misty called him a dumb shit. Hey, Misty is hot in those little shorts. I think I'd like to do her.
Pikachu - Pika! Pika! Pika!

(Does anyone else remember an episode where Brock and Officer Jenny disappear for the whole show, and then Brock comes back with a big smile at the end, and doesn't talk about girls for about a whole minute? Did I just imagine this one out of a secret deep empathy that wants Brock to actually score for once? Please help me.)

And then it just keeps getting cooler. Pokemon fight, Ash hugs them. Mewtwo questions the rules of society and just what entitles someone to be a Pokemon Master. Nurse Joy disappears, a huge storm brews, Officer Jenny wears a miniskirt.

Life is good. All is right.

I've got to say, for the first half of this movie I was not disappointed. I thought it was kicking my ass and taking my name.

But then... but then...

... but then everybody starts getting all uptight about Mewtwo making the Pokemon fight each other!

What the hell? I've been watching this freakin' show for two months, I play the video game, ALL THEY DO IS FIGHT! It's the whole POINT of the stupid thing!

Then all the sudden out of the blue, everybody in the movie turns into the same whacked out watchdog group representatives that are causing a stink about the whole phenomenon as we speak!

Ash - I make my Pokemon tear each other to bloody, gooey strips every day, but I know that fighting is wrong.
Misty - Even though Ash is a dumb shit, he's still right. When we fight, nobody really wins. Say no to drugs.
Brock - Ash said that fighting is wrong and Misty said that fighting is wrong, and I agree. Fighting is wrong. Stay in school.
Pikachu - Piiika?

I heard an argument to the effect that the fighting suddenly became cruel because Mewtwo blocked all the Pokemon's special powers and turned it into an all out fisticuffs street brawl.

Well call me crazy, but I think that if anything blocking the special powers makes the fighting more humane. I mean, call me crazy, but if I was up against Charmander in a fight, I'd rather have the little freak punching me in the kneecaps than blowing fire up my crotch.

To add injury to insult, the American version of the big fight scene replaces what I understand is a very dramatic musical score in the Japanese version with some Blessed Union of Benetton, "Brother against Brother" piece of crap.

What da?

It was like they were trying to do the whole contrast between disturbing visual and soothing audio like that futuristic Racecar/Exploding Head thing on Liquid Television, but it just ended up looking more like Teletubbies dancing to N'SYNC.

Lame.

And then what's up with that ending?

Mewtwo uses his psychic powers to reverse time and pretend that none of it ever happened?

Come on!

That's just a glorified "Whew! It was just a dream" ending.

Yep. From about the time that Mewtwo starts making clones, it's all downhill.

Not even downhill. More like off a cliff.

(Now if you'll excuse me, I've gotta catch 'em all!)