Pokémon: The First Movie - Mewtwo Strikes Back!
Warner Bros. Pictures | Release Date: November 10, 1999 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
35
METASCORE
Generally unfavorable reviews based on 25 Critic Reviews
Positive:
5
Mixed:
10
Negative:
10
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
75
Boston GlobeBesty 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
75
New York Daily NewsJack 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
70
Chicago ReaderLisa 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
63
San Francisco ExaminerWesley Morris
The film is obviously a long-form episode of a show better digested in 22-minute segments. Read full review
63
Miami HeraldChristine 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
60
The New York TimesAnita 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
58
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
A dismayingly impersonal piece of anime, genial yet chaotic. Read full review
50
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
It's just a sound-and-light show, linked to the marketing push for Pokemon in general. Read full review
50
USA TodayMike Clark
Plays a little like a pacifistic variation on Bruce Lee's "Enter the Dragon." Read full review
50
New York PostHannah 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
50
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie 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
50
San Francisco ChroniclePeter 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
50
Chicago TribuneMarc Caro
The sense that the movie serves mostly to showcase a slew of purchasable cartoon figures loses nothing in the translation. Read full review
50
VarietyRobert 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
40
L.A. WeeklyNicole 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
30
Austin ChronicleMarjorie 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
25
Baltimore SunAnn 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
25
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
So sloppily made that it's barely coherent. Read full review
20
TV Guide MagazineSteve Simels
This totally sucks. Read full review
20
TNT RoughCutBill McLochlin
Why do I keep having to see such awful movies? Read full review
20
Los Angeles TimesRobin Rauzi
Pokémon isn't even good animation, unless the standard of measure is the crude LCD graphics of a Game Boy. Read full review
13
Mr. ShowbizLarry 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
10
Washington PostMichael 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
10
Film.comRobert Horton
There isn't a moment of wonder or poetry in its very long 69 minutes. Read full review
0
Village VoiceMichael Atkinson
Possibly the most deranged, pointlessly complex, automatic-writing-like cultural manifestation outside the cosmologies of the more creative psychotics. Read full review
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