The Good:
The visuals. Now, I'm not much of an animation buff, so my standards might be comparatively low, but I think this is where the movie (quite literally) shines. The world of Tamagotchi is filled with unique characters and odd, "living" architecture, all rendered in beautifully eye-pleasing pastel. Everything, from the buildings to the filing cabinets, has subtle faces, makes expressions and is in constant, organic motion. The characters, while stylistically simple, are all completely unique; in fact, despite a rather dense population, I could not spot even two identical looking characters in the entire movie. All of this contributes to an atmosphere of strangeness and wonder. In this regard, the movie definitely succeeds.
The Not-So-Good:
The story. This is the movie's biggest and most damning weakness. The core premise is that of a young girl's accidental teleportation to Tamagotchi World, the home planet of the famous virtual pets, but instead of focusing on this girl's adventures in this strange, new world, or maybe on her attempts to get back home, the story shifts focus almost every ten minutes. At first, it's about the girl, then it's about one of the Tamagotchi characters' fear of the dark, then it's about his little Tamagotchi sister hatching from an egg, then it's about the planet getting sick, because the sun has disappeared... you get the idea. So many random ideas, so little cohesion. The fact that these conflicts and their consequence-free resolutions are often unrelated to one another makes the movie feel more like a collection of short episodes and not like one, coherent storyline. It's a shame, really, because as I said above, the world design and the color palette certainly are nice enough to make for a good kids movie. To be fair, however, as weak as the story is, at the very least the movie's messages are not quite as ill-conceived and trite as they are in many other substandard children's movies and TV shows. They address the various insecurities a child might feel in the role of the older sibling, and encourage the expression of feelings and opinions even at the risk of offending others. That's a bit more substantial and practical than the usual "Be nice and love everyone" theme, I suppose.
In closing, I guess I would recommend this movie only to two kinds of people: Very young children and devoted fans of Japanese animation, who can get enough of a kick out of the vibrancy and radiance of the visuals to overlook the clumsy randomness of the story.
On a side note, I watched the English version of this, and some of the voices were ear-bustingly shrill. I cannot say if the Japanese original fares any better in this regard.
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