This is a fun movie. For people who don't have kids that played pokemon (with pokemon?), they are like little monsters who are generally not hostile, can be captured and work for/with you, and all have their own racial personality quirks, and their name usually reflects their personality or appearance. This movie is set in a city where people and pokemon live side by side.

The hero of the story is a young man who claims he doesn't want a pokemon, and throughout the film we learn why this is so, and how he later becomes partnered with a pokemon. His acting, and that of his female counterpart are such that you don't know if they're intentionally being overdramatic, or are still perfecting their craft, but it's entertaining to watch, regardless. Kind of like watching a high school drama club production.

There's a scene there with Mr. Mime (an annoying mime pokemon) that by itself makes the movie worth watching and is more entertaining than the entire movie about an ocean-dwelling male superhero movie I could mention, but won't. Without giving the scene away completely, the hero ends up using the mime's miming ability against him, which is something everyone who has ever seen a mime wishes would happen to them at some point. My favorite scene though was later on in the movie where a ditto imitated a cubone (the protagonist had trouble catching a cubone in the beginning of the movie) which you'll know when you see it. The choice of the cubone pokemon, sound effects, etc. were fun and softened what could have been a very scary scene if done differently to a humorous one that was not scary but still got the point across.

It's a kids' movie, so things aren't overly subtle, but they ARE generally entertaining, which is the point of seeing a movie. People do get "injured", but there isn't any real blood, no sexual innuendos to try and make the movie hip for adults, etc. It's just a rated PG movie that pretty much anyone could see these days.

And finally, early on in the movie we see "wild" pokemon running around and my daughter, who is an animal (and pokemon) lover and who loves collecting "pets" IRL said, "mom, if this was real, you'd never see me again" which to me means they did a decent job showing pokemon in the wild. Oh, yeah, one negative note on this score, at the very end of the movie there's a scene in a train station that shows almost exclusively *people* walking back and forth, and in a city that's supposed to be a fusion of people and pokemon, it really seemed like they cheaped out, or ran out of cgi funding before finishing the movie. Where were the pokemon? A minor gripe though.