Force me to watch Pokemon for 10 days straight. Force me to watch endless re-runs of Barney. Heck, even force me to watch the Teletubbies. But please, don't submit me to watching Digimon: The Movie again!

As with many kids around America this weekend, my daughter convinced me to take her to see Digimon: The Movie. I don't really like the Digimon series in general. However, like with the Pokemon fad, I felt that it might be better to allow my daughter to OD on the series to the point where she doesn't want to watch it anymore. So I relented and took her to see the movie today.

Oh my aching head...

Before I go further, it's probably best to explain a little bit about Digimon for the uninitiated. According to the story, there are actually two worlds: the real world and the digital world of the Internet. In the first season of the series, seven kids who are at summer camp together are somehow transported from the real world to the digital world. While there, these kids meet up with seven Digimon, funky looking critters that have various forms. Digimon hatch from eggs into their original forms, little more than big-eyed heads, bouncing around and acting truly annoying. In their "digivolved" forms, they are actually kind of cool. These kids, dubbed the "DigiDestined", fight an evil dark power that is controlling the Digimon using black gears. The second season of Digimon begins about 4 years later. This time, 3 new kids join the ranks of the DigiDestined. This time, the DigiDestined must stop a new bad guy, another human who has taken over the digital world and is ruling as the DigiEmperor. As with the old DigiDestined, the new kids meet up with some new Digmon. Each of these Digimon can digi-volve into new forms. The members of the original DigiDestined also join the adventure and find that their Digimon have new evolved forms as well.

So what is there not to like about this series? Just about everything. And everything that is bad about the series has been brought into Digimon: The Movie to turn it into a parental nightmare.

The storyline of Digimon: The Movie is divided into 3 distinct parts. In the first part of the movie, we see Tai and his sister Kari, two of the original DigiDestined, as tots. Tai and Kari find an egg that eventually hatches into the Digimon that Tai later finds in the digital world. At some point, an evil Digimon named Parrotmon attacks Tai's home city. Tai's Digimon evolves into Greymon and saves the city. The kids who watched the battle between Parrotmon and Greymon are the kids who later become the DigiDestined.

The first part of the movie is about 20 minutes of Hell, with lots of violence and some re-written history that did little to eliminate my confusion.

The second part of the story occurs 4 years after the first part, at some time after the kids have returned from the digital world at the end of Season 1. Izzy, another of the DigiDestined and something of a computer guru, discovers an egg on the screen of his computer. This egg hatches into some evil Digimon that has been infected with a virus. This is where the movie starts to go really whacky, because the evil Digimon changes forms and names so fast that I couldn't catch them all. (Further, there isn't enough money in the world that would make me want to watch the movie again to catch the names!) Somehow, this evil Digimon is able to multiply quickly and in extremely large numbers. As it does so, it takes over the Internet and causes things like phone systems and satellites to fail. Tai and the other DigiDestined, who are now scattered all over the world, have to find a way to get into the Internet and defeat the evil Digimon.

Another 45 minutes or so of Hell, and we're on to the third part. I suppose that I'm spoiling things by saying that there is a third part. I don't care though. If you're watching this movie, I doubt that you're watching it for the great plot surprises anyway.

The third part of Digimon: The Movie is set sometime around Season 2 and has the second generation of DigiDestined traveling to America to locate Willis, another DigiDestined that my daughter claims not to have ever seen before, regardless of the fact that she's watched just about every episode of the series. Willis, it seems, created the virus that caused all of the trouble in the second part of the movie. One of Willis's Digimon has gone crazy and is now following him everywhere. Why? Who cares! By this time, I just wanted the heck out of the movie theater.

Overall, this movie (and the series) are just downright confusing. There are 10 kids between the two generations of the DigiDestined. The movie adds Willis, and unlike all other DigiDestined, this boy has two Digimon. So now we have 10 kids and 11 Digimon who can all digivolve into various forms. The scriptwriters didn't make it easy by just referring to the same character name, regardless of the form. Nope. They gave each a unique name. So I had a really hard time keeping everything straight. The same sort of thing goes for the enemy Digimon, who also have various names depending on their evolutionary level. So there are tons of characters and names and not much time to appreciate any one of them.

Oh... my brain hurts!

The adaptation and screenplay isn't completely lame. There are a couple of good quips that let me laugh, but it is still mostly a mess. To appeal to the least common denominator (6 year old kids, maybe?), there's some potty humor. There's an attempt at romance. And, in an attempt to appeal to parents, the writers have added a "hit the kids over the head with a hammer if they don't get it" moral of "teamwork is good".

The bad writing is wrapped around animation that is less than stellar. (I'm being nice when I say that!) The characters are flat and roughly drawn, with bright, glaring colors. In addition, some computer generated animation is thrown in, but the transition between traditional and computer generated animation is often abrupt and clumsy.

The only marginally redeeming aspect of this film was the soundtrack. There are a couple pop tunes like Smashmouth's "Allstar" and a new rendition of "Kids in America" that actually had my foot tapping. However, any appeal of the soundtrack disappeared because of the preponderance of blaring heavy metal tunes. My ears are still ringing!


Parental Warning


Digimon: The Movie is rated PG because of excessive violence. I expected that much. There are no dirty jokes or swearing. But that's little consolation. The theater also saw fit to run a rather steamy advertisement for Fox's new series The $treet, complete with heavy panting and lots of sexual innuendo, as part of the preview clips. If this is a kid's movie, why were they running garbage like that?

Parents, take your child to see this only if you want to end up in therapy. Your child may like this. Mine thought it was OK. She couldn't tell me why though, and that's enough to make me more than a little concerned.




Recommended: No