DVD
Upcoming Release Calendar
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
Best / Worst of the Decade
Recent DVD/Video Releases
68
$9.99
49
2012
56
Adam
37
Amelia
50
Armored
53
Astro Boy
35
Babysitters, The
66
Bandslam
86
Beaches of Agnes, The![]()
19
Bitch Slap
65
Black Dynamite
71
Bliss
24
Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, The
47
Box, The
51
Breakfast with Scot
44
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
76
Broken Embraces
71
Bronson
61
Capitalism: A Love Story
57
Chelsea on the Rocks
43
Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant
65
Coco Before Chanel
69
Cold Souls
23
Couples Retreat
75
Crude
81
Damned United, The![]()
54
Dare
61
Dead Snow
27
Did You Hear About the Morgans?
68
End of the Line, The
55
Endgame
47
Everybody's Fine
64
Examined Life
xx
Falling for Grace
31
Fix
74
Flame & Citron
xx
From Mexico with Love
28
Gentlemen Broncos
64
Gigante
58
Gogol Bordello Non-Stop
72
Good Hair
73
House of the Devil, The
82
Hunger![]()
17
I Hate Valentine's Day
66
Informant!, The
34
Law Abiding Citizen
33
Love Happens
59
More Than a Game
34
Motherhood
49
New York, I Love You
34
Ninja Assassin
19
Old Dogs
47
Ong Bak 2: The Beginning
68
Paris
44
Peter and Vandy
39
Planet 51
86
Ponyo![]()
79
Precious: Based on the Novel by Sapphire
73
Princess & the Frog, The
49
Private Lives of Pippa Lee, The
84
Revanche![]()
69
September Issue, The
79
Serious Man, A
36
Serious Moonlight
70
Shall We Kiss?
24
Sorority Row
40
Spiral
41
Splinterheads
33
Stepfather, The
50
Stoning of Soraya M., The
47
Time Traveler's Wife
44
Twilight Saga: New Moon, The
83
Up in the Air![]()
65
Vicious Kind, The
69
We Live in Public
65
Wedding Song, The
71
Where the Wild Things Are
43
Women in Trouble
48
Wonderful World
73
Zombieland
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Pokemon the First Movie: Mewtwo Strikes Back

Generally unfavorable reviews
Based on 25 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 27 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Family/Kids
Written by:
Takeshi Shudo
(English version) Norman J. Grossfeld
Michael Haigney
John Touhey
Directed by:
Michael Haigney
Kunohiko Yuyama
Release Date:
Theatrical: November 10, 1999
DVD: November 14, 2000
Running Time: 75 minutes, Color
Origin: Japan / USA
Summary
RATING: G for General Audiences
Starring Veronica Taylor, Racheal Lillis, Eric Stuart, and Ikue Ootani
A scientist genetically clones creatures from the Pokemon named Mew, creating Mewtwo, which begins cloning other Pokemons resulting in disastrous circumstances. The film ends with the message that fighting is futile and wrong.
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Pokemon 3 Pokemon 4Ever Pokemon Heroes Pokemon: The Movie 2000
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Boston Globe Besty Sherman
The Japanese animation is beautiful, and the script adaptation for the English-speaking audience is well-paced, clever, and absorbing enough to keep parents from squirming.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
The favorable three-star rating I'm giving the animated Pokémon: The First Movie is based at least partly on the fact that I expected to dislike it and didn't.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Lisa Alspector
By the time the fighting between clones and their originals turned to fraternal bonding, I was quite moved, even blissed out.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Examiner Wesley Morris
The film is obviously a long-form episode of a show better digested in 22-minute segments.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Christine Dolen
What a mere adult reviewer has to say about this 70-minute film is probably irrelevant. Pokémon fans will see it -- and love it -- regardless.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Anita Gates
But the animation, with its rich colors and stylized angles, is fun to watch and at times does seem like a psychedelic "Sesame Street."
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
A dismayingly impersonal piece of anime, genial yet chaotic.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Peter Stack
It isn't terrible. It's far from a milestone in Japanese animation, and not an especially memorable entertainment. Yet it doesn't try to be either of those things.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
Essentially, the film functions as a holiday catalog, introducing fans to a new Pokemon whose effigy they can collect in trading cards.
Read Full Review >USA Today Mike Clark
Plays a little like a pacifistic variation on Bruce Lee's "Enter the Dragon."
Read Full Review >New York Post Hannah Brown
Strictly a kids' movie, but parents may be relieved to sit back and enjoy the fact that for two full hours, they won't have to hear the kids asking them to buy any more Pokemon trading cards.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
It's just a sound-and-light show, linked to the marketing push for Pokemon in general.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Marc Caro
The sense that the movie serves mostly to showcase a slew of purchasable cartoon figures loses nothing in the translation.
Read Full Review >Variety Robert Koehler
Girls -- a big part of the Pokemon crowd and what makes it such a humongous commercial success -- will feel left out in the cold.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Nicole Campos
Are the little ones really getting anything more out of this slightly flashier, exceedingly louder 75-minute version of their usual 30-minute dose of anime hijinks?
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
There is a new definition of the term, "critic-proof movie," and it goes by the name Pokémon: The First Movie.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Ann Hornaday
With its incomprehensible plot, flat visual style and indecipherably mixed messages (violence is good; no, wait, violence is bad!), this movie seems chiefly to be an excuse to sell even more trading cards.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
So sloppily made that it's barely coherent.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Robin Rauzi
Pokémon isn't even good animation, unless the standard of measure is the crude LCD graphics of a Game Boy.
Read Full Review >Mr. Showbiz Larry Terenzi
First the TV show, then the video games, the playing cards, the books, the clothes, and now the movie -- the dreaded movie.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan
An unoriginal warming over of a skimpy Japanese production that has been re-edited, rescored and rewritten for American tots and padded out to feature length with a plotless short called "Pikachu's Vacation."
Read Full Review >Film.com Robert Horton
There isn't a moment of wonder or poetry in its very long 69 minutes.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Michael Atkinson
Possibly the most deranged, pointlessly complex, automatic-writing-like cultural manifestation outside the cosmologies of the more creative psychotics.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.5 (out of 10) based on 27 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Elizebeth gave it a10:
Mewtwo is a really cool character idea. It's a cool story line and I really like it. The only thing that I'm commenting on the bad side is that Pikachu's vacation is cheesy.
Hernán V. gave it a9:
A great movie, with some big poetic moments and some portions of very good music, that only failed in trying so hard to show every Pokémon possible to be shown and including some out-of-context music (commercial songs, and at some times unapropiate soundtrack). But, in the overall, a memorable animated film.
liz gave it a7:
Best of the movies,cute and nice.however the best part is pikachus vaction:D
Kitty C. gave it a 4:
Under average. A great beginning spoilt by a middle and ending that goes on.. and on.. and on. Not to mention that the animation is sub-par and if it was better than it was in the tv-shows this would have had a five.
[Anonymous] gave it a 10:
This movie is great and I like the series itself, so automaticaly I love the movies.
Layne gave it a 2:
Lacks everything that could have made it a good film, takes advantage of the fact that children are going to see it regardles how awful it is and thus doesn't try to be anything good.
Grant A. gave it a 10:
The movie is cool because mew and mewtwo battle.
