The Unown terror

>> Pokémon: The Movie 3 is strictly for kids

by MICHAEL CITROME

The third big-screen iteration of Pokémon takes the animated kids' saga into troubled waters. Pokémon: The Movie 3 is a very, very confused kiddie film that will undoubtedly appeal only to either kiddies themselves or, perhaps, diehard Pokémon addicts.

The basic premise: there's a kid with special powers and she tries to kill everyone until someone really understands her pain. Then all is right with the world. It starts out in a gigantic villa perched on a hill. The mansion is home to a young girl, Molly, and her father, Dr. Spencer Hale, a distinguished scientist who is a specialist in--get this--legendary Pokémon. His wife disappeared mysteriously years earlier. The good doctor has dedicated his life to investigating the Unown, a type of Pokémon far more mysterious than the fuzzy little creatures familiar to the under-10 set.

In his book, the Unowns look like they've been torn from the pages of the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual, but when he gets into the recently discovered hieroglyphic chamber, they turn out to be more like the bad guys from Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing. So these flying Alphabits catapult Dad off to parts unknown, leaving the kid with only a box of supernatural Scrabble tiles to remember him by. She spells out some words, makes a wish, and conjures up a huge ventriloquist lion sure to be a big seller at Toys R Us. At Molly's behest the lion becomes her surrogate dad and kidnaps a woman to become her new mom.

Here comes the plot: the woman is actually the mother of Ash Ketchum, the cap-toting star of the Pokémon TV series. Molly's mind is enslaved by the Unown, and she becomes an almighty Pokémon trainer. A peaceful town gets covered in crystalline spooge and 60 Poké-battles later, Ash saves the day.

The feature is preceded by a 22-minute animated short called Pikachu and Pichu, which featues Pokémon of all stripes cavorting in a vaguely European city. It's scored, oddly, with a Dixieland jazz soundtrack that'd sound at home on a Peanuts special.

There's no distinct moral message to Pokémon 3, other than the sappy notion of love conquering all--it's mostly just meaningless violence and the animation is far from Disney quality. In fact, it's only a few steps up from the rushed-looking animation seen on the TV series. There are a few sequences with impressive computer animation and painted backgrounds, but on the whole Pokémon 3 isn't much to look at. For kids and drooling fanboys only.

Pokémon: The Movie 3 opens Friday, April 6