For adults, the world is full of rules, be they regarding societal laws or the ways one should act in relationships, at work or while engaged in some sort of play, such as sports. Although kids must also abide by rules, they have the advantage -- in terms of freedom -- of allowing their imagination to run free. While it's usually unheard of for adults to suddenly make up new rules while playing basketball or imagine they're cleaning their spaceship while washing the family van, kids will routinely do such things.
That's particularly true of play that's already more imagination-based, such as those fantasy-related card games. If anything, such rule bending and on-the-spot creation allows for an anything goes mentality, and I fondly remember experiencing that as a kid many eons ago.
If handled just right, such material does have the potential of making for a fun or imaginative, kid-based film. "Yu-Gi-Oh!" is not such a result. Based on the card-playing game and animated TV show that followed, this is clearly a rip-off of the once popular Pokémon game and related products and not a very good one at that.
I'm not intimately familiar with the "Yu-Gi-Oh!" game or TV show, but in the movie, anime-drawn kids (the ones with frozen expressions but twinkling eyes and usually one drop of perspiration to suggest determination) battle each other through a series of cards that -- like the old rock, paper and scissors game -- can defeat or at least one-up the other.
While fans of the game or TV show might enjoy the offering and introduction of various new characters (a marketing ploy that Pokémon also employed), to everyone else the resultant film may just seem like the cinematic equivalent of a long, drawn out and decidedly tedious root canal.
In essence, it's 90-some minutes of watching such anime characters play the game. One draws a card, followed by their opponent and we see which one wins. The same pretty much occurred in the earlier "Pokémon" films, but it didn't seem as tortuous as it does here.
There's a minor subplot about an ancient Egyptian god of the dead who -- thanks to the main character -- has been resurrected and wants to finish his destruction of the world that he started 5,000 years earlier. That amounts to some late in the game theatrics, as well as some confusing bits about what's presumably the characters' souls, doppelgangers or imagined representations ending up in the ancient tomb while their physical selves (and minds) still operate topside in the card game. An ancient pharaoh also manages to possess the main character, although that bit isn't consistent.
Thankfully, I wasn't alone in my perplexed reaction to what was occurring. A mother behind me at our screening asked her child whether any of that made sense to them. I didn't hear a response, but I'd guess that anyone in their teens or older will be perplexed, bored silly or both.
As far as the plot is concerned -- if it even qualifies as that -- any dramatic potential is squandered due to the aforementioned "anything goes" rules. Although a card-created monster or other being can be destroyed, a subsequent "bring 'em back from the dead" or "reverse the previous action" card can bring them back (some reappear several times and likely are worn out from being destroyed and resurrected so many times).
The filmmakers - Hatsuki Tsuji the first time around and Alfred R. Kahn adapting it for American audiences the second -- try to inject some "adult humor" into the proceedings to check and see if the adults are awake.
Yet, the dual Brando reference (which must be a record for an anime film), a brief Scooby-Doo one and an obscure Johnny Rotten joke (the latter two dealing with animated mummies) fall as flat as the rest of the overwrought and melodramatic effort that includes some of the unintentionally funniest verbal exposition I've ever heard in a film.
While I was initially pleased that Pokémon regular Pikachu wouldn't be found anywhere in this film, I started to long for a return of the little fellow as this film progressively grew worse and worse. Although fans of the material may just enjoy it, I can only imagine and hope that at least they'd rather be playing the game than watching others do so as occurs here. "Yu-Gi-Oh!" rates as a 0 out of 10.
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