Digimon hits theaters nationwide

More uninvited Japanese monsters are currently invading local movie theaters. This time, it’s a new outbreak of little colored blobs in “Digimon: The Movie.”

So what’s the difference between “Digimon” and that other merchandising monster, “Pokemon?” At first glance, about four letters.

“Pokemon,” the darling of the WB Kids TV lineup, is about these “pocket monsters” who hang out in little ball-shaped condos. “Digimon,” a mainstay of Fox Kids, is about “digital monsters,” who flourish on the Internet.

These Digimon are bonded to these young Japanese children with huge eyes and impossibly long limbs, known as the DigiDestined. The Digimon have the ability to “digivolve” into a stronger form, always with great fanfare, to battle evil Digimon. (Trying to keep these characters straight gave me a digi-headache. One brain can handle only so much useless trivia.)

For out-of-the-loop adults like myself, “Digimon: The Movie” had only two things going for it: a psychedelic color scheme (big among us boomers) and a dynamite alt-rock-pop soundtrack. Oh, yeah, it also stayed within an adult’s short attention span for unintelligible kid films, which is about 90 minutes.

Here’s what passes for the plot: A powerful new Digimon hatches and begins consuming computer data at a prodigious rate. This Digimon rapidly digi-volves to its mega-form, Diabormon, taking over world communications and threatening world peace (not to mention stopping e-shoppers from ordering their trendy little red Python purses from Ninewest.com).

So a group of these big-eyed kids send their Digimon after this threat to civilization.

Eventually, the two remaining Digimon evolve into this giant digital Transformer named Omnimon, and the forces of good prevail. (That’s the short version. Thank me for that.)

Just when the relieved adults sit back in their seat, thinking the torment is over, the movie flashes forward four years, where we meet Wallace, an American DigiDestined who had twin Digimon (remember that American motto: nothing succeeds like excess). Anyway, it turns out that one of Wallace’s Digimon had gotten possessed by the defeated Diabormon and has been lost to him.

The original DigiDestined, in an improbable turn of events, all land in America, where they team up with Wallace. The only way to defeat Wallace’s lost Digimon is to appeal to his inner child (let’s add to the pain with pop psychology).

Not surprisingly, this all made perfect sense to my 5-year-old junior critic. (She even has one “Digimon” video, violating the sanctity of our home, which had been a no-mon’s-land.) She liked all of it, and wasn’t scared by any parts of the movie. When asked which she liked better, “Digimon” or “Pokemon,” she said, “Both.” (She, thankfully, still lives in a world where making choices isn’t a necessity.)

So let’s recap the sins against film committed by “Digimon: The Movie”: minimal plot, celluloid-thin characters, dubbed voices that makes the viewer want to stick sharpened Digimon pencils in his ears. Let’s hope the next kids’ TV show raced to film in a rapacious grab for cash is a little more adult friendly.

Dale McGarrigle is a Style writer who writes about contemporary music, television and pop culture. His 5-year-old daughter, Samantha, fortunately doesn’t watch “Digimon” very much at home since she’s discovered the surreal pink world of Barbie (plus the Fox stations are located 100 channels away from her cartoon channels, and she’s not that talented with the remote yet.