Pokémon: The Rise of Darkrai
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Caution: potential spoilers.

This is the 10th movie based on the Pokémon TV series. It also begins a trilogy which continues in the 11th movie and concludes with the 12th movie.

It starts with a battle between Palkia (ruler of space) and Dialga (ruler of time), which are considered deity pokémon. (So I guess that means they're beyond your typical "legendary" pokémon, though it's all the same to me.) But actually I guess the battle is really a nightmare that someone named Godey was having, though he's not really a character in the movie. Godey would be the great-grandfather of a character named Tonio, who discovered Godey's diary, which talked about the nightmare and other important things. Godey was also the architect of the Space-Time Tower, in Alamos Town. And I guess he was a friend of a girl named Alicia. And Alicia would be the grandmother of a girl named Alice, who is friends with Tonio.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. We soon see our heroes, Ash, Brock, and Dawn, on their way to Alamos Town, where Dawn is looking forward to her next pokémon contest. However, the way is difficult, so they're lucky to get a ride in a hot-air balloon from Alice. And she plays a tune on like a leaf-whistle, or whatever. Which pokémon enjoy listening to, it's soothing or whatever. Once they reach town, the gang and their pokémon all play for awhile, and have some battles with some random people they meet. But then they find there's been some sort of destruction nearby. And we meet a guy named Baron Alberto, who is pretty full of himself, and wants to marry Alice, but she isn't interested (she's clearly more interested in the much shier Tonio). Anyway, Alberto says the destruction was caused by Darkrai, so he tries to battle Darkrai with his Lickilicky, without much success.

Darkrai can give people nightmares, and it gives one to Ash. It also keeps saying "Go away," which is kind of strange, I mean, I just don't expect pokémon to talk (other than Team Rocket's Meowth), but whatever, anything can happen in one of these movies. Anyway, Tonio, who is a scientist, has been monitoring abnormalities in space-time, a rift or something. And um... at some point there's a weird disturbance above the Space-Time Tower. And there's flashbacks to Alica and Godey's time, as well as to when Alice and Tonio were kids. I've kind of forgotten the exact sequence of events in the movie, but it isn't that important. I should also mention that the Space-Time Tower has these large stone discs that can be inserted into a mechanism at the top of the tower, to play different tunes. This is quite important, as one of the tunes is one that Alicia had taught Alice to play on the leaf-whistle.... Anyway, the whole thing kind of reminded me of the Christmas special Twas the Night Before Christmas, but again I'm getting ahead of myself.

Um, what else? At some point I guess the whole town was transported into another dimension, or something. Palkia and Dialga lived in this other dimension, so now they're in town having their epic battle. And um, oh I must say the real world was merging with the dream world. So we see all sorts of images floating around, but more importantly, Baron Alberto turned into a Lickilicky himself, while his Lickilicky was asleep and dreaming. So he himself tried to battle Darkrai. Which was interesting, I guess. Meanwhile Team Rocket were posing as a news crew, doing a story on the Baron and his pursuit of Darkrai.

But of course our heroes, along with Alice and Tonio, realized Darkrai had been trying all along to warn them about the battle between Palkia and Dialga, and it was the deities it had been telling to go away, not the humans. So... now Darkrai risked its life by intervening in the battle, while the humans came up with a plan to calm down the deities and end their battle, as more and more of the town began to disappear around them. If the battle wasn't stopped soon... well, it would be catastrophic. Perhaps for the whole world, not just Alamos Town, I'm not really clear on that. But whatever, the situation was dramatic and perilous and everything, and the plan of course nearly failed, and... I guess that's all I want to say. Of course it isn't a spoiler to say the day is saved in the end, because really, how else could it end?

Anyway, it wasn't a bad movie. There were certainly things about it that I liked, though the epic battle part... personally I found it a bit underwhelming, even if its effect on our heroes was serious enough. Whatever, not one of my favorite Pokémon movies, but it was okay. All the stuff about the interconnectedness of time and um... whatnot... well, it was interesting I guess. And there were some funny moments I suppose. And some fun. And that's all I can say, I guess....