Alright so I'm just going to say that I never really watched Digimon growing up. I had at least seen parts of a couple of episodes from various times, but for the most part - as my family and plenty of people from my elementary school could tell you without a care, I was one of those children who was more or less dangerously obsessed with Pokemon to seemingly no end. But then one of my best friends, Meg would sometimes bring up Digimon and how 'I must see it' and how 'it's soooooooo different from Pokemon'. Eventually she showed me a couple of random episodes from season 1 which convinced me to go through all of that season. Then shortly after watching Thor 2 with her (which I'm reviewing right after this one), she decided to show me a bunch of certain episodes of season 2 to show me how the story of the characters from both seasons end. But about halfway through that, she showed me Digimon the Movie. So here's how that turned out.
Plot: This is something of a package film in that it contains three different stories all in one movie. The first one has to do with two of the original main characters, Tai and Kairi discovering a Digi-egg that hatches into a Koromon which somehow leads to a battle in which the Koromon digivloves (the Digimon term for evolving or transforming if you will) into Greymon and is fighting this...supposedly evil parrot-like Digimon called...Parrotmon. Then we move to a story that is set four years later where both characters along with the original cast have already become the DigiDestined (think Pokemon Trainers if you can), and they are trying to destroy this Digimon who is also a virus that is trying to destroy the internet/all technology (take your pick). Then we get the final story that has to do with a boy named Willis who was mentioned in various times in the first two stories, who is trying to defeat one of his two Digimon who has been corrupted with the help of the main cast from season 2.
Okay so before I start reviewing this film - similar to what I did when I reviewed Hey Arnold: The Movie, I'd like to point out my thoughts on the show itself before talking about what the movie did wrong. Now I honestly think that even if my parents (but mainly my mom) did let me watch this show, I probably still would've preferred Pokemon because of how it has a more fun world that influenced you to want to be a part of catching and evolving these certain creatures while reaching for the ultimate goal to become a Pokemon Master. But even with that said, I did enjoy most of the show for what it was worth considering how it truly was very different from Pokemon. It had its own unique universe, it had some really cool creativity with a lot of the different kinds of Digimon, an extremely catchy theme song, and it did have some likeable characters...for the most part. But when it comes to a first movie...it's not hard to see where this movie is pretty inferior to the first Pokemon movie. You no doubt noticed that I had trouble explaining the stories in what is happening in this film. Now granted, part of that is because most of you probably don't know a whole lot about Digimon as the gist of it would probably take more time to explain then most of you would care to read. But even then, it's hard to explain what is happening because it's so confusing with these three stories that were poorly paced, sometimes didn't make any sense even with my knowledge about Digimon, and above all, neither of them made any connection at all. It tried to do that when it came to bringing up Willis, but aside from one brief clip, we don't see him until the final story. From the point of view of someone who has watched the first two seasons of the show, most of these stories would've made a lot more sense if these were actual episodes instead of being crammed into each other to try to be a movie. (Oh and I'm not saying anything about the Angela thing in the beginning of the film, because Meg was kind enough to skip to just Digimon) Actually, I take that back, that's true for just the last two stories. The first one was really just giving us something of a 'full tale' of this flashback Tai and Kairi had later on in the show, which still wasn't needed. Even if they were showing us more then what the flashback gave us, there was still little to no story or character development to carry it on enough to be really worth something for both fans and non fans alike. Which brings me to my other problem; they didn't make the film so that even non fans can get into it. Part of why the pacing was bad was because they don't explain what Digimon is about. Even all of the exposition that was trying to explain/connect the three stories was hard to understand unless you have subtitles because of the speed that it's being explained. So all your seeing is mindless action and exposition you can't understand and jokes that don't work if you're watching this as a non fan...or maybe if you are a fan. Who knows? And the soundtrack also has a bunch of pop culture songs that are just played throughout the film such as "All Star" from Smash Mouth and "One Week" from Barenaked Ladies, that while are fun songs they served no purpose to what was happening in the film. The best part of the film was the animation and the action, but after that, this film falls flat hard.
And that's my review for Digimon The Movie. If you grew up with Digimon, you may be a little more forgiving with what happens, but in the reality of things, it's a terrible film that had horrible pacing, character development, and had little to no connection to the stories it was trying to tell. I'm glad I watched the first two seasons when it comes to finally discovering what Digimon was, but this film seems to make a terrible mark on the franchise making Digimon The Movie a movie I would avoid seeing.
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