Grade: C-

Verdict: Maybe by the fifth or sixth movie they'll have figured out how to make it good.

Details: Animated film featuring the voices of Ikue Ootani and Unsho Ishizuka. Rated G. Includes the short "Pikachu's Rescue Adventure." 1 hour, 24 minutes.

Rate it: Write your own review

Review: The new Pokémon movie is a lot better than last year's first flick. And slightly better than a poke in the eye.

"Pokémon the Movie 2000: The Power of One" has more accomplished animation, more drama and a decent enough sprinkling of jokes, all adding up to something barely watchable. Kids who loved the first film - "Pokémon: The First Movie: Mewtwo Strikes Back" - will love this one even more.

Bring lots of cash.

It takes a ton of dough to be a fan of Pokémon. There are those character cards to buy, videos to purchase (22 in fact; the latest being "Hang Ten Pikachu") and Nintendo games to acquire.

So it's nice that the Japanese, inventors of this animated franchise of lovable and ornery mini-monsters kept in little balls in kids' pockets, appear to have taken some of the $155.7 million the first film earned worldwide and put it into making a better second movie.

The story has our kid hero and ace Pokémon trainer Ash Ketchum, sort of an uninventive version of Harry Potter, traveling to some far-off islands, where a Pokémon collector's scheme is unleashing some giant squawking birdlike Pokémons. It's complicated, but enough to know that the world will become unbalanced and - unless Ash acts - be obliterated.

There's a storm. Not a perfect one, mind you, but a big, wave-churning storm nonetheless. And a big, big circular flying gizmo (think of the mother ship in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" with little whirligigs) that the Pokémon collector uses to bop about the globe.

There's lots of squawking (way too much for adult ears) from the bird-thingees, lots of Ash angst and lots of Pokémons. They arrive en masse in the middle of the movie to stand around as far as the eye can see and make the flick look epic.

Of course, many children adore this franchise. Parents defend it, too. They marvel about the Pokémon themes of love, goodness, sharing and caring. They never seem to mention Pokémon's most important element: niche marketing.

You want love and goodness? Rent the excellent "Babe." Sharing and caring? Try the marvelous "Toy Story" movies. (At least Disney, the vilest king of marketing, usually puts out a first-rate product to tout its wares.)

Come to think of it, maybe this "Pokémon" is not better than a poke in the eye.

— Bob Longino, Cox News Service

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