One of the most bizarre movie premises for a mainstream film to have emerged in the last year was Pokemon: Detective Pikachu. Based on the video game of the same name, which in turn is a spinoff of the popular Pokemon video game series, the film features Ryan Reynolds as a wise-cracking talking Pikachu with amnesia who teams up with a young insurance salesman named Tim (Justice Smith), still grieving over the death of his father, as they try to figure out who’s unleashing a toxic gas that’s causing Pokemon all over their hometown of Ryme City to go around and start attacking everyone around them, leading them to uncover a much larger scheme in place.
Being the first live-action film set in the Pokemon world, there was a little bit of skepticism in how the Pokemon were going to be portrayed in a setting like this, though thankfully, the film does an excellent job bringing many of these creatures to life. There are a large amount of Pokemon who appear throughout this movie - some for only a brief period - but they all look like faithful recreations of their animated counterparts. While there are moments in which the CGI doesn’t always blend in well together, some of them feel incredibly realistic, while not towing the line of creepy (see Christopher Robin for where that goes wrong). Many of the tougher Pokemon appear menacing, while many of the cuter Pokemon look adorable.
The film doesn’t so much involve the one element that drew a lot of fans to Pokemon in the first place: Pokemon battles. They’re around, including one sequence in a stadium that will remind those from the very original fanbase of the video game Pokemon Stadium, though they’re not a key element of this movie, only being featured in the background. Being more of a detective film, the movie almost feels like a family-friendly noir film with Pokemon battles in the background. Fans who were looking for grandiose battles of Pokemon battling will find themselves a bit disappointed, though the times there are these fight scenes, the visuals are stunning and as every bit as over-the-top as one would imagine.
The movie’s highlight, and driving force behind why it works so well, is Ryan Reynolds, and this film makes plenty great use of him. The character feels very much like another iteration of Reynolds’ other famous wise-cracking hero, Deadpool, although with his quips being significantly toned down for family-friendly audiences. Reynolds clearly knows how insane this whole premise is, and plays this element up multiple times throughout the film, making up catchphrases that he later admits are ridiculous, while getting coffee and wondering why a Pikachu would ever be addicted to coffee. While he doesn’t always reach the same comedic heights as he did with Deadpool, he’s still pretty funny here.
Despite all this, the rest of the movie doesn’t always feel like it syncs up to Reynolds. Despite a ridiculous premise, the film often takes itself way more seriously than it really needs to. Even though the movie is called Detective Pikachu, Justice Smith’s Tim is just an equal of a presence in this movie, if not larger. The character is far from written well, and it isn’t done any favors from Smith’s shoddy, often flat, delivery. The character is portrayed as a brooding loner type right from the beginning, and this is before the news that his dad passed away has been broke to him. There’s an ambiguous feel as to why he keeps to himself, and why he doesn’t open up to anyone around him. He often seems like someone who just doesn’t care, and there really isn’t much that’s interesting about him, so it’s hard to become invested in anything he really has to say or do.
The rest of the human cast are also not up to snuff, and are often regulated to stock characters. Kathryn Newton plays Lucy, a junior reporter who comes off as crazy and quirky for the first half of the movie before the surprise reveal that she actually wasn’t crazy after all, which causes her to team up with Tim. The film then shoehorns in a romantic subplot between the two within the last 30-45 minutes that comes completely out of nowhere, despite the fact there was no romantic chemistry between them leading up to that moment. Meanwhile, Ken Watanabe plays Tim’s dad’s former partner on the police force, and feels like a recycled “wannabe mentor” character that wants to form a bond with the troubled main character. He sporadically pops up throughout the movie to give a motivational pep talk here and there, only to be quickly rejected by Tim.
The film’s biggest sore spot, though, is the conflict behind the toxic, transformative gas, which also involves Bill Nighy as the disabled head of a business conglomerate, and his son, played by Chris Geere, as their company has involvement with the gas. This is where the film gets needlessly complicated. While the film did a great job quickly explaining who Pokemon were for the uninitiated at the beginning of the movie, every other explanation for events in this movie are not handled nearly as well. As the film moves along, it has to explain more and more. It often finds itself in long exchanges, and almost too many cuts to flashbacks, in order to explain what’s going on.
And to make matters worse, by the end of the movie, the motivations still remain unclear. While it’s not so difficult to basics of the grand, evil schemes, the movie does a terrible job at laying out why they’re necessarily being done in the first place. There are characters with some shifting allegiances in the second half of the movie, and despite all the wordy moments where the movie attempts to connect all the dots, it can easily lead to some confusion by the end of the movie. The film’s second half feels all over the place, and because of this, the villains end up being poorly written and uninteresting.
Pokemon: Detective Pikachu is a bit of a mixed bag. Its story hits a lot of familiar beats, and a lot of its characters are those that have been seen in countless other movies. And the villains, along with their motivations, are poorly written and unclear, despite the film’s dragged out attempts at explaining things to the audience. Despite this, the film offers some fantastic visuals, with some really well-done action scenes. And its biggest saving grace comes in the form of Ryan Reynolds, who carries a lot of this movie thanks to his very funny voice-work. The positives outweigh the negatives in the end, and while it didn’t reach the same bonkers heights as it could have, it’s still an overall fun, if uneven, time.
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