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Guess it's time to reevaluate my lack of faith in anything spiritual. Obviously to deserve sitting through the second Pokemon movie in less than 12 months I must have swiped the Dalai Lama's parking palace or something equally anti-karmaic in a previous life. The only way to survive it would be to repeat the mantra "W-W-H-D." What would Hunter (Thompson) do?
"The clamorous lines outside and into the theater are a claustrophobic kindertraum nightmare. Are they giving away free Skittles, or did a nearby orphanage burn down? It's like that scene in Gremlins where vicious punk lizard-monkeys take over a screening room to pitch their own private riot, only this is nothing so pure and transcendent as Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. A year ago they said Pokemon, which is Japanese for 'buy me and buy me until your college trust fund is exhausted then hold your breath until Dad sells the Camry and buys more,' was a $6 billion industry; you'd think they could at least afford to send out a few tranquilizer guns and electric capture nets with each print for crowd control.
"I can do this. Just gotta resort to what the sports psychologists call 'dissociative thinking' -- concentrate on something else, like sex or Breyer's Peach Ice Cream, or both. The technique got me through an Ironman -- swim 2.4 miles, bike 112 miles, run 26.2 miles -- as well as traffic school after that time I rode my Ninja through the lobby of the Hyatt to avoid backed-up traffic turning left on N. Main from Beattie at rush hour. I should be able to survive anything.
"The previews tout another budget-anime series-based full-length cartoon feature coming in the fall called Digimon. Good lord, these aren't movies, they're cold sores; you get past one, think you're living right, and another one comes along.
"This is even scarier than I remember from last year. The characters have that gape-mouth that bespeaks someone who neglected getting a tetanus booster before walking barefoot through a Bosnian junkyard. And the kids, they don't laugh or squirm, they just stare. There's something wrong when little boys keep repeating the word 'cute.' The urchin next to me can only say 'nice graphics' even though my three-legged cat could have drawn this with an Etch-A-Sketch, so maybe it's all subliminal. I nab his two-pound institutional-sized box of Junior Mints, silencing his complaint by threatening to follow him home and deep-fry his turtle, then swallow all the candy at once, thinking a toxemic dextrose infusion might change my perspective, but now I just want a martini to cleanse the palate, and I don't even drink.
"Do you have any idea the impossibility of summoning any salient commentary on this...thing that actually dares use dialog like 'Disturb not the harmony of fire, ice, and lightning lest these titans reap destruction on the world in which they clash'? That's what happens when Sony buys out Blue Mountain Greetings. I'd rather listen to Christina Aguilera read aloud from Petersen's Field Guide to Gravel.
"Judging from the favorable reception to a few random jokes deadpanned by a talking pygmy hippo onscreen, this might have worked with the What's Up Tiger Lily routine, where Woody Allen takes a Japanese movie and writes a script that has nothing to do with the original plot. You know, what began as a children's cartoon winds up as Hannah and Her Sister's Psylocibin-Fueled Rave Weekend.
"Names fly such as Moltrase and Zaptose, which I'm sure were taken, along with the plot, from the ingredients list on a box of Fruit Loops. On the soundtrack a Lennonesque-titled tune 'We All Live in a Pokemon World' boasts supremacy. And omigod there's even a character named Mr. Mime. Where are Godzilla and the Enola Gay when you need them most?
"That does it. Some scriptwriter actually had the nerve to put the words 'it's disgusting; the way you talk, Pokemon are things to collect, like dolls or stamps' in the huge, disfigured mouth of a manga-child. Time to wield nunchuks on the projectionist and halt this evil madness. But the children -- their eyes...their piercing little eyes..." F
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