Plot: Professor Hale is a research scientist who is looking for the elusive Pokemon called Unown. But during his discovery Hale is trapped in a dimension of Unown leading his daughter Molly all alone. Molly finds a box of tablets containing Unown images and unknowingly summons the Unown who make her wishes come true, including turning her house into a crystal castle and create Entei to represent her father. When one of Molly's wishes includes Entei kidnapping Ash's mother so that she can be Molly's mother, Ash and his friends must find a way to rescue both Ash's mother and Molly from the spell of the Unown.
So now we come to what is apparently the very last Pokemon movie that was released with a nationwide release by Warner Brothers. For a final film before they only started to release it in limited theaters, it's my understanding that some people thought this was the best one of the first three films and thought it was a major bummer that this was the one that made the least amount of money. For me personally I still like the second one the best so far, but I do see why people think this movie is particularly good. Not to the point where I like it quite as much, but I can understand why.
The main reason why this one is considered the best of the first three is because it has a stronger narrative. There's a lot of detailed explanation as to why all this has happened and there's a reason why Ash is connected to this as opposed to how he got mixed up with what was happening with Mewtwo or Lugia and the legendary birds in the previous films. We also have a stronger understanding how this fake Entei has appeared and how he has developed a strong connection with Molly. This is something I particularly like given that when you get down to it, it's a very strange concept. I learned the story for this film from bunch of kids back when it was starting to come out in theaters, and I never saw it around that time because again the first movie was the only one that I saw when I was little. So I think there was a part of me even back then that noticed that when really get down to it the idea of a little girl having this big powerful Pokemon, Entei as her father and then forcing Ash's mom to be her mom is a very odd concept. The story in general is not as epic as the previous film, but to be fair, maybe it's for the best that they focused on just giving us some big adventures without the whole world being at stake.After all, how can you really top something like the fate of the world the way Pokemon 2000 did.
But again they were very clever in having it all fit in. developing its no way where it makes sense and if nothing else make the relationship between the girl and Entei very strong. But it's not without at least a couple of noticeable flaws. For example, we never find out more about the Molly's mom who has gone missing. It's just thrown in there and the focus is left to just the part where her dad goes missing thus leading to the events of the film. And I know that's the point; that this is really about Molly and Entei and how he's sent as a surrogate of her father. But I can't help but feel a little annoyed that we never got any details about the fact that her mom was gone there was no connection to it when I feel like there should there been. Like wouldn't it have made more sense if Molly's mother was also researching on Unown and disappeared some time prior before her dad does? Because she really disappeared without no explanation and the whole matter about her was resolved what was just as little information. Also maybe I missed something, but there doesn't seem to have been any real motivation whatsoever for the Unowns to give Molly this world and cause all this chaos. It's kind of like they just happen to decide to give her all this power just because she just happened to summon them. However there is a good argument that her emotions also make her technically a very complex antagonist. She's not doing this to be evil, she's doing this because she's lonely and has lost so much and is all alone and the audience can completely understand that. But there's also something of a moral that is kind of thrown in at the very end that has to do with her desire to become a Pokemon trainer and a have friends which is nice but would have made more sense if it was brought up prior. Both of those wants were thrown is during the last third because her real want was her father. Also one thing that really bugs me early on is the fact that apparently Molly and Ash have met before when they were both very little. This backs up how they were smart to give a connection between Ash and the conflit, but if that's the case, shouldn't she be around the same age as Ash? Because they kind of implied that she really should have.
One big Improvement from both the first two films is the action. The Pokemon battles in the movie are pretty awesome to watch. I'm not be a kid anymore, but the young child who loved pokemon that's still inside me really enjoys watching the battle from the beginning, the fight between Brock and Misty against Molly, and Entei vs. Charizard. In fact, it is pretty cool that Ash's Charizard decided to come in and help out. All and all, the action really showed how much the technology and animation improved since the last two films.
The characters as usual are pretty enjoyable. It's nice to see Ash with his original companions again for the most part even if I have grown out of them. But Team Rocket were completely useless in this movie. They never did a single thing in his films apart from just following Ash and observing the situation. Granted they mostly did that in the first movie too, but at least we got a little bit of exposition out of them exploring Mewtwo's castle. But here, they just observe and make some pretty bad puns.
And that's my review for Pokemon 3: The Movie. It's not as epic has its predecessors and there are some considerable problems with the plot to me personally. But the setup is much stronger and the action and animation has improved greatly and just gives us an adventure that's not as big but still a lot of fun. The second one is still my favorite so far, but this is good enough to be recognized as an okay threequel.
Rating 65%
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