Fresh Precure! Movie: Omocha no Kuni wa Himitsu ga Ippai!?

If a single movie can destroy the liking you have for its 50-episode main series, you know it's in a bad place. I watched this film not long after I finished Fresh Precure, a season where my liking towards it was already on thin ice. This film tipped it over the edge.

This film can generally be summed up as the Precure franchise's take on Toy Story- Very very literally. But unlike the Pixar classic, the plot of the Fresh Movie is extremely generic and too predictable for it to be truly compelling. Predictability doesn't always make stories uncompelling, but it indicates a lack of effort ... to try and structure or express the same message differently with the context in mind, which I think this movie was unable to do. I managed to correctly predict the ending halfway into the movie, and the resolution wasn't a convincing enough message for me to take away.

The only Cure that had any sort of relevance in this film was Peach, and the other three practically didn't need to be here at all. And I get it; Lead Cure ftw, but there have been movies that have done this relevancy issue better even if the story is focused on mostly one Cure (Suite, MahoPre, StarPre, to name a few). So from the get-go, the success of this movie was dependent on Love. And she failed.

Years later, Mahoutsukai Precure would feature a similar Cure-Toy story in Mirai and Mofurun, which was put into the spotlight properly in both series and movie, that created one of the best Cure-Mascot relations and Precure movies of all time. Fresh's movie brought in Usapyon as a movie-exclusive character, who had no impact on the main series whatsoever. It created too much of a burden towards making a deep story between Love and Usapyon for the "Forgotten toy" prompt to be emotionally powerful. Love's defence and promise to Usapyon did not convince me and came off as a spoon-fed message.

Maybe it's to do with how I never really liked Fresh Precure, but this movie was TERRIBLY boring. The board game concept slowed down the pace drastically and only Passion's individual fight scene really made me bat an eye. The CGI for the final battle was jarring as heck and the villain has zero personality. All comedic relief did nothing; I recorded my reaction and as I looked back through it I don't think there were even 5 moments where I was truly engaged. It was more like "Yes yes let's kick the villain's butt and get out of here." As basically a mega-fan of Precure for 4 years, this attitude of mine was unfathomable. But there's a first time for everything.

I've lost count of how many of my Precure friends I've ranted to about this film, going as far as saying "This movie wasted my time." I do feel my disdain towards this film is partly subjective, and I've tried to keep most of it outside of this review. Generally, this film was a bore-fest and it led to Fresh Precure being the only season of the franchise I left hating it. The series had good qualities, but this one- I cannot excuse.