Review of Pokémon the Movie: I Choose You! (2017) by Clem666 — 03 Jan 2021

This review appeared to be way longer than I actually expected.

New adventures for Ash, the luckiest boy in the whole Pokémon universe. He just can't stop crossing the way of many legendary Pokémons, some unseen by many people who even studied their genesis and existence. Just in this movie Ash sees Ho-Oh, Suicune and Entei! And we don't even speak here about the other movies... But this one highlights an impressive number of different Pokémons. We can see them interact with each others and their trainers. Nothing more to say about them unless that their sizes are respected (Entei is actually 6'9 tall in opposite to what we witnessed in 'Pokémon 3: The Movie' (2001)). Credits are amazing since we can see all the characters of the series appear. They could have smiled anyway. Instead they all have that 'what am I doing here?' face.

Soundtrack is great and has some winks to the games by using some classic melodies. Special effects are good in overall but some are just lame at some point of the movie. Scenario is classic but contains way too much inconstant flips: the sky is beautiful, then suddenly grey, and they clear blue again for nothing. These are disturbing inconsistencies. However the movie manages to include short adventures (side-quests) that bring more details on Ash's personality and philosophy. This allows us to get through varied emotions all along. I found the bad guy of the movie was shallow and overly stereotyped.

Attacks of the Pokémons match with those in the games excepted in the end where they all are blasting colourful lasers coming out of nowhere. There are however some major disproportions as we see Pikachu winning against a Snorlax who was about to crush him. The fact that we see evolutions is great and underlines the idea of constant progression.

Considering the idea of seeing Ash in a normal world and going to school as a regular kid is really interesting and adds to the magic of the Pokémon universe. Multiple times the movie oscillate between pure rational logic (if Ash don't wake up at the right time he doesn't get to choose the Pokémon he wants) and 'fairy tail' logic (your Pokémon can get completely beaten up but still will never die). It is difficult to situate oneself in relation to these constant changes.

Characters are all well-designed and show some deep personalities. Only Jessie, James and Meowth are the same as always and appear to be quite useless excepted for being blasted off again and again all along the movie. Making Pikachu talk to Ash is really weird and breaks the magic. There were other opportunities to make him communicate with Ash without talking. This is aberrant. But not as much as the end. I can't stand kids movies making their heroes die and then resurrect. After all the violence this movie contains you can't invoke magic to resurrect people. Life does not go that way. How are children supposed to learn about grief? I wasn't expecting a moral lesson from this movie but still got disappointed on that fact.