Daily Inspiration Quote by Ian Hislop

Hislop’s line lands because it commits fully to the grand old British art of comedic overkill: not “pretty bad,” not even “worst of the year,” but “the worst movie ever made on any subject ever.” The joke isn’t just that he hated the Pokemon movie; it’s that he’s performing a kind of mock-moral certainty, the same absolutist tone usually reserved for wars, elections, and scandals. By attaching that voice to a children’s franchise, he exposes how easily adult cultural criticism can drift into pompous self-parody.

As editor of Private Eye and a long-running satirical presence on British TV, Hislop trades in weaponized incredulity. The subtext is twofold. First, it’s a jab at a media environment that treats mass entertainment as an unavoidable civic event; he “has seen” it like a weary correspondent returning from the front. Second, it’s a wink at generational culture shock: Pokemon as a symbol of late-90s commercial mania, engineered not to be a “film” in the prestige sense but a branded extension of a merchandising ecosystem. Hislop’s hyperbole refuses to meet it on its own terms, which is precisely the point.

The intent, then, isn’t a serious ranking of cinematic failures. It’s a clean, efficient status move: asserting adult skepticism toward corporate kid-culture while letting the audience enjoy the exaggeration as a shared release valve. The line flatters your discernment even as it mocks the very impulse to sound discerning about Pokemon.