Fish and Cherries Productions

Summary: In a world where humans live alongside fantastic creatures called Pokémon, Ryme City exists as a place where they can live and work together in harmony without battles or captures. But young Tim Goodman (Justice Smith) is coming into town for a much sadder reason: his father Harry was killed in an accident. When looking through his apartment and getting his affairs in order, he comes across a Pikachu in a hat (Ryan Reynolds) who Tim can surprisingly understand. Turns out, this Pikachu was Harry’s partner and believes that he might still be alive, but some foul play might be at work. Together with a young reporter named Lucy (Kathryn Newton) and her Psyduck partner, Tim and Pikachu follow the clues to track down Harry and whatever twisted scheme he got himself wrapped up in.

Review: Pokémon: Detective Pikachu is a perfectly basic movie with some Pokémon dressing. The plot follows familiar beats and a standard plot, though it still manages to have a few surprises. The characters are likable enough and put in a decent performance, though sometimes I felt that Ryan Reynolds’… Ryan Reynolds-ness works a lot better in Deadpool than it does here. Still, I have to give credit to the visual team for being able to walk the line of realistic and cartoonish for the Pokémon designs, coming up with something that’s extremely faithful to the original designs and doesn’t look butt ugly in a live action movie (looking at you, Sonic movie).

When the movie started, I was worried about how well people uninitiated with the Pokémon franchise would be able to follow it. Thankfully, I was able to exhale as the newcomers I talked to said they were able to follow it perfectly fine and didn’t feel overwhelmed by information or backstory. That’s always something I fret about with adaptations or movies of franchises that have been going on for a long time because it’s very easy to make the story so dense with facts and inside jokes. There are certainly a fair share of in-jokes to be sure (like the Jigglypuff with the microphone from the cartoon), but they’re the kind that aren’t intrusive and won’t leave people lost if they don’t catch them.

There are only two complaints I have: Lucy doesn’t have nearly as much to do as she could and, despite the title, Pikachu doesn’t do a whole lot of detective work (maybe there’s one or two scenes where he puts clues together without explicitly being told information). But there’s certainly stuff I enjoyed as well, like how Tim and Lucy actually seemed to be into each other from the moment they met and didn’t fall into the rom-com cliche. You know, where the romantic leads start out hating each other only to fall for each other? Yeah, I hate that trope. So all in all, I think Pokémon: Detective Pikachu is a fine film even if it won’t set the world on fire. At the very least, it’s probably the best video game movie out there, even with the low, low bar that’s already been set.

Still looking at you, Sonic movie.

Fun Tidbit: The actor that dubbed for Justice Smith in the Japanese version, Ryoma Takeuchi, cameos as a Pokémon trainer in a video that Tim watches.