Digimon: The Movie

Digimon: The Movie is rated PG: for action violence.

Presuming its young frenetic audience has the attention span of a fruit fly in a bug zapper, Digimon: The Movie breaks its 90-minute running time into three bite size pieces (like the 30-minute TV series their fans have been conditioned to). The first animated short, about a girl named Angela Anaconda and a bunch of selfish kids scrambling to get the best seats at their local theater's presentation of Digimon, was like a pep rally whipping the audience into believing they are experiencing cinema history.

The second bite is the main story. Tai, a young Japanese boy hatches a cute little Digimon from an egg pulled out of his computer. But his download (who, much to the joy of the audience, leaves noisy little digi-poops everywhere) doesn't stay fuzzy-wuzzy for long. Within minutes the family pet digivolves into a huge monster. From that point on, I'm not sure what I am witnessing. Is it still friendly? Where did it find the other Digimon that it gets into a huge street fight with? Now Tai's younger brother TK is an emotional wreck because he watched their Digimon almost die.

A few more quick edits later and I'm informed four years have past. Tai and his friend Izzy are concerned about the birth of Diabormon, a new Digimon that's eating the Internet byte by byte. Somehow this disrupts global communications and triggers a nuclear missile to be fired from the U.S. toward Japan. Tai, his friends, and their Digimon must battle Diabormon and save the world. But during the fight a set of twin Digimon, belonging to an American named Willis, are separated from each other. To be continued...

Tai and his friends are teenagers as part three begins. They join Willis in his search for the lost twin who has turned evil. Confused? I was.

More violent than Pokemon, this frantically paced movie with its hyper soundtrack is certain to train young audiences to beg for the monster's images. Now the real battle begins--Digimoney: The Licensed Products -- now playing at your local department store.

Studio: (pictures (c)2000 20th Century Fox).

Digimon is basically a commercial to promote the many licensed products available to purchase. You may want to ask your children if they can identify other movies (Pokemon, Star Wars, etc.) that use similar promotional techniques and have them understand how these licensing costs add to the price of the products they purchase.

Of course, Digimon are a close imitation of Pokemon on which the movies Pokemon: The First Movie, Pokemon 2000, Pokemon 3: The Movie, and Pokemon: Mewtwo Returns are based.