Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie

The popular kiddie cartoon show comes to the big screen, looking exactly like a TV cartoon blown up to colossal proportions. The story, all but incomprehensible to non-fans, has to do with a 5,000-year vendetta between an Egyptian Pharaoh (the alter-ego of young hero Yugi Moto) and the evil nemesis Anubis, who inhabits the body of Kaiba, Yugi’s implacable rival. The conflict is played out in the show’s bizarre card game, which the players seem to make up as they go along. The show’s pre-teen fans may get their parents’ money’s worth, but the rest of us can only scratch our heads at the appeal of what is, despite all the flash and thunder, just a poorly animated film about two kids playing cards, with characters and creatures that a bored eighth-grader might doodle during a really dull class.