Pukemon
Snide Remarks #118
"Pukemon"
by Eric D. Snider
Published in The Daily Herald on July 28, 2000
"Pokemon: The Movie 2000" grossed $20 million in its first weekend. In a related story, I'm going to kill myself.
I've seen plenty of bad movies, of course, including the entire oeuvre of Freddie Prinze Jr., who is this generation's Keanu Reeves (a comparison lost on people who think Keanu Reeves is suddenly a good actor just because he was in a good movie. Surrounding yourself with goodness does not necessarily make YOU any good, as Judas Iscariot would surely tell you). Usually, a bad movie spews forth its badness for two hours (three, if Kevin Costner is involved), I write a review, and I cast it from my mind forever, often with the aid of over-the-counter Butterfingers.
But the new "Pokemon" movie was different. This movie wanted to physically hurt me, apparently enacting some centuries-old grudge it holds against my family. For 90 minutes, it pushed me into a corner and beat me in the face with a 2-by-4. It held me upside-down and dipped my head in the toilet. Metaphorically speaking, it tied each of my limbs to a different horse and then fired a gun in the air. A thousand Freddie Prinze Jr.'s working around the clock for a thousand years could not produce a movie more loathesome than this. It's an aggressively bad movie, a movie that won't be satisfied until it has sprayed its foul evil on every inhabitant of the Earth, a movie conceived by Satan and produced by his Pacific Rim minions for the sole purpose of tormenting mankind with its hellish freak show of badly drawn characters and incomprehensible dialogue. I spent an evening in the emergency room after viewing it because so vile and filthy was the very thought of "Pokemon: The Movie 2000" that I jabbed a pen in my ear and tried to scrape out the part of my brain that remembered seeing it.
This is a movie that is not very good.
It is the story of some Japanese people, and how they're not very good at animation. In fact, the Japanese word for animation, "anime," literally means "lousy animation." They have no word for "good animation," or "animation in which the objects actually move," because those concepts are unknown in Japanese culture. The movie also tells the story of some Japanese marketing guys who wanted to make some more money off a craze that died a year ago, so they said: "Don't bother hiring artists or writers. We'll just fling a bunch of Pokemon images at the screen, and then watch the money come rolling in. Get Satan on the line, and have him finance the project, which shouldn't cost more than $12."
OK, the movie is ACTUALLY the story of a boy named Ash who collects Pokemon so that he can make them fight whenever the situation calls for it, and pretty much EVERY situation calls for it. Then there's a bad guy who wants to catch three particular Pokemon so that he can have control over the Beast of the Sea, don't ask me why. Everyone yells a lot, and no one says anything funny, and half the time you're wondering why they're doing the things they're doing, and when it's over, you find yourself unable to speak coherently or perform simple arithmetic.
There is no art in "Pokemon." It is an attempt to make money, pure and simple, with no regard whatsoever for talent, storytelling, entertainment value or anything else that is good, decent, wholesome or non-evil. Normally, a film with so little redeeming value would flop, unless Adam Sandler were attached to it. But not "Pokemon"! With a lot of kids still interested in the adventures of the video game-turned-TV show characters, the film will make money regardless of whether it's any good (which, as I believe I may have inferred, it is not).
Greater philosophers than I have said that evil is most dangerous when it's subtle. Run for president on the platform that, if elected, you will personally oversee the slaughter of every man, woman and child in America, and you probably won't get many votes (though you'll probably still beat the Libertarian candidate). But if you just say you want "reform" and "a rebirth for this nation," you'll be lopping off heads in the Oval Office before anyone even realizes what's happening.
The arts are no different. If we allow mediocrity just because it seems harmless and our kids enjoy it, the people behind it will just crank out more, and soon our only entertainment choices will be the insidious garbage of which "Pokemon" is a perfect, horrific example.
Is this what you want? I hope not, or I weep for the health and safety of our nation's film critics, as well as the people who have to put up with their whining.
This item has 10 comments
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Lily says:
April 1, 2008 at 2:02 pmYou Rock=]
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John Doe says:
April 1, 2008 at 9:42 pm"Please stop being so critical of things that other people enjoy. [If I ever write another book, this will be one of the quotes to go on the back cover.]"
I think that should be the title of your next book, should you ever make one. Either that or "Stop making fun of that thing I like."
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Clumpy says:
April 6, 2008 at 7:14 pmWell, the first Snide Remarks book already has this quote on the back:
"We feel that maybe you shouldn't be so critical of ["Titanic"] when so many other people enjoy it."
Same difference. I completely forgot that I had both of those books.
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Derek says:
April 29, 2008 at 6:16 pmI’m sorry but I nearly died from laughter in the middle of class (yes I’m in HS)
While a fan of most Japanese animation, I still like to believe I can recognize crap when I see it. Of course when I was 10 and pokemon 2000 first cam out I thought it was cool. But yes, in retrospect it was crap.
What really got me laughing though were the angry letters. That anyone could actually get offended over your dislike of Japanese anime…I can’t decide if it’s funny or sad.
The incoherent net babble by He3r0yUy@aol.com was absolutely priceless, as was the backwards logic of tommydang123@netzero.net. I don’t know where these people come, but I have to say, I’m certainly glad that you felt fit to share the laugh.
You know I really think you rock, and I think your review, snide remark and commentary of the angry letters were all dead on. Just remember if you ever do feel the need to Play Final Fantasy, you can probably find one at your local video game store
(The lord laughs with those who can laugh at themselves)
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Leah Jane says:
April 30, 2008 at 12:06 amThe column was funny, but the angry letters made my day, my week, no, my very lifetime! I sometimes give basic Japanese lessons to high school kids who are major anime lovers, and they drive me nuts. The ones who type like those who responded to the column... I feel the strong urge to tell them they can get Japanese lessons only when they learn to speak English properly first. I think this column should be posted on the back of every piece of Pokemon merchandise ever made, as a warning to parents.
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A Petit Caucajeuner says:
November 29, 2008 at 2:12 amWOW!! Those first three paragraphs were pure magic! Thank you thank you thank you!!!!!!!
!
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andré garcia says:
July 5, 2009 at 11:12 pmAHHA i loved your post, but man are you wrong about animé: just watch some of miyazaki, kon, oshii, takahata, taro rin, tezuka works and you will be spellbound, i tell you...to me keanu reaves is and always be the DUDE! guy, right? Me, i've got a beef with de niro, brando, and bradd pitt, so imagine the hate i would get if i posted somethin' in my blog-on-which-i-dont-write-nothin'-on---EHHE as for keanu or prinze jr, they are pretty irrelevant to me, i just dont see their films, so the fact that they suck is not much of an issue, we are not forced to watch bad films, and a film critic such as yourself can tell for sure the films more likely to suck beforehand...i liked keanu on van sant's my own private idaho, but yes van sant's make anyone look good when he puts people out of focus (Lol). I haven't seen POKEMON though, nor have i seen much of it, back when it was a fad (and man here in portugal it was big), me i was more of a dragon ball fan (and that my afriend is THE all time worst film: DRAGON BALL:EVOLUTION...), i guess the film can be crap---luved the irony in pukemon, and man this post is magnanimous..ahah, one of the best moments of bloggin' i've ever read...ebert is gonna be jealous (and man that fatso did not like BLUE VELVET at all...)...i never saw anyone so upset by a movie, but tell me is not this one of those cases wehere a film reaches such a lower depth of crapola than it actually becomes genius and awesome?
What's your thoughts on transformers? Have u seen any japanese anime film which is on the opposite side of pokemon?
Stay cool!
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John D says:
December 3, 2009 at 10:30 pmFirst of all, this column made me a little sad, as I was a huge Pokemon fan back in the day. Putting that aside, I can't really agree with Eric's critique of anime. The Pokemon animation, when put alongside something made by a master like Miyazaki, is really, really simplistic. In Hollywood terms, that's like comparing a Michael Bay movie to a Stanley Kubrick. And I will admit that I thought Pokemon 2000 was awesome when it came out, which was when I was about nine years old. I'd probably hate it now, but that's just how life goes.
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Aaron Brooks says:
March 15, 2011 at 6:24 pmYes, Pokemon is dumb, but I don't particularly enjoy playing Candyland, either. I don't think I'm the target demographic for either of those.
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gst says:
May 10, 2011 at 1:57 pmAaron, take back what you said about Candyland, you son of a bitch.
Copyright © Eric D. Snider.
This work may not be transmitted via the Internet, nor reproduced in any other way, without written consent from Eric D. Snider.
Notes:
Have I overstated the badness of the "Pokemon" movie? No. If anything, I have understated it.
The general tone of this column was greatly influenced by a book I was reading at the time called "Mike Nelson's Movie Megacheese." Mike Nelson was head writer and on-air host of "Mystery Science Theater 3000" (the show that heckled bad movies), and the book is a collection of essays about various films, types of films, and celebrities. It is hysterically funny, and Mike's style of writing is erudite and crisp. His plot summaries in the "Mystery Science Theater" episode guide had a lot to do with the laid-back tone I often take in describing movies and plays when I review them, and now his solo project influenced me enough to help me write this "Pokemon" thing.
Another contributing factor was that when I wrote the official review of the "Pokemon" movie, I made a lot of anime fans angry because I said the film employed the "characteristically crappy" style of Japanese animation. They took offense at the generalization that ALL Japanese animation is bad; I therefore took great care to make that generalization even more sweeping in this column, hoping to incur more of their amusing, poorly spelled wrath.
In those days we had a feature on this site where anyone could post comments without registering or using a real name or e-mail address or anything. We got dozens and dozens of comments on this column, many of them tiresome and/or obscene. Here is an archived version of this column from back then, with the comments preserved. And here is an archived copy of my review of the movie, which got a lot of comments, too.
In addition to the posted comments, I also got these official e-mails. The first one was technically in response to my actual review of the movie, but I'm posting it here because it's easier and I'm lazy.
And then this one, from a "Snide Remarks" fan's 18-year-old sister who, the reader tells me, thinks any actor who is good-looking is a "good actor":
Then we have this delightful missive from "He3r0yUy@aol.com." He says, and I quote:
That pretty much shut me up. I mean, how can I make fun of anime fans after a rebuking like that?
A while later, I got this e-mail. I don't know if it was in response to this column or to my actual review of the movie, but I think it was the column. At any rate, it went like this:
Again, I am speechless. "You don't even like Pokemon because you hate it" is one of the best bits of logical thinking I've ever heard. She's right: The reason I don't like Pokemon is simply that I hate it. What could be plainer?
In March 2001, I was treated to this missive from one "tommydang123@netzero.net":
I didn't realize all my troubles could be traced back to my never having played Final Fantasy. My therapist will be glad to know of this breakthrough.
And by the way, saying the Japanese aren't very good at animation is not a racist statement. Saying the Japanese are inferior people, that would be racist. But I didn't say that. Americans aren't very good at playing hockey. So what?