Pokémon the Movie: Secrets of the Jungle (2020)
There's a very specific kind of tired that sets in when you're watching a film and you realise, about fifteen minutes in, that absolutely nothing surprising is going to happen. That's the feeling that settled over me watching Pokémon the Movie: Secrets of the Jungle. It's Pokémon Tarzan. It's Pokémon Jungle Book. Pick your classical "feral child raised by animals" story, swap the animals for a grumpy monkey-like mythical creature called Zarude, and you've essentially written the screenplay yourself before the opening credits finish.
Tetsuo Yajima's 2020 entry into the long-running franchise drops us into a lush forest, where an abandoned toddler is taken in by a Zarude who, in a move that quietly breaks its own universe's rules, ditches its pack entirely to raise this human child as its own. Years pass, the boy grows up feral and forest-wise, and then Ash and Pikachu wander in and kick off what the film generously calls an adventure. I'd call it a series of mildly connected events that leads to a conclusion you could see coming from the moment the opening scene ended.
Honestly, the whole experience is just profoundly fine. And I want to be precise about that, because "fine" can sometimes mean "quietly decent." This isn't that. This is fine in the way that a beige wall is fine. It's not offensive. It's not broken. It's just completely, stubbornly unremarkable, and that's arguably worse than being a mess. It's remarkably average even by the fairly forgiving standards of the Pokémon film series, which is quite an achievement when you think about it. Compare it to something like Pokémon: The First Movie, which for all its clunkiness had genuine emotional stakes and a central idea with some weight to it. This has neither.
The environment is lush and colourful, and the Zarude design is fine (there's that word again), but the film does absolutely nothing of consequence with any of it. There's a mythical creature, there's a jungle full of Pokémon, there's a villainous threat, and yet none of it leaves a mark on the wider lore or on the viewer. It's a completely self-contained side-quest, the animated equivalent of a filler episode stretched to feature length. You will forget it before the end credits finish rolling.
Now, I have to be honest about my own bias here, because my kid absolutely loves it. And that does matter. It's a useful reminder that I'm not always the intended audience, and that there's genuine value in something that keeps a toddler locked in and happy for ninety minutes. If you're a dedicated fan of the franchise or a parent looking for exactly that kind of low-stakes, brightly coloured comfort food, Yajima delivers it reliably enough. Pikachu does his cute little sparkly thing in a pretty new setting, and for some viewers, that's the whole deal and it's perfectly satisfying.
But for everyone else, the repetitive plot beats and the endless creature chatter start to blur into background noise fairly quickly. There's no sense that anyone behind the camera was genuinely excited by this story, or felt it was one that needed to be told. It exists to keep the brand engine turning, and it does so with a shrug rather than any real spark. I've seen the 2019 CGI remake Pokémon the Movie: Mewtwo Strikes Back Evolution cop a lot of criticism, and fair enough, but at least that film was working with source material that had some emotional muscle to it. Secrets of the Jungle doesn't even have that to fall back on.
It's harmless. It does its job. It just doesn't do it with any flair, any ambition, or any real reason to exist beyond ticking a box on the release calendar. Two stars, and most of those belong to Pikachu.
Rating: ★★ | Year: 2020 | Watched: 2026-07-21
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Netflix · Netflix Standard with Ads
Rent: Apple TV Store · Amazon Video
Buy: Apple TV Store · Amazon Video
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: Netflix · Netflix Standard with Ads
Rent: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US
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