Any aging Pokémon fans who’ve been told that their Pokeemans are children’s games, bad news: you’re about to hear the same about the new Pokémon movie, Detective Pikachu.
So rotund with repeated exposition it sluggishly waddles forward, and lazy in both its yucks and sleuthing, it indeed succeeds in bringing Snorlax to life. While nostalgic adults will surely find some pleasures in its fantastic realizations of the franchise’s creatures (Sonic, meanwhile, now looks even more abhorrent), this thing has all the maturity of a Disney Channel sitcom. Despite a fun premise that could have been a nice little family film, Detective Pikachu thoroughly ends up a sub-mediocre though unexpectedly well-shot kiddie flick.
Justice Smith stars as Tim Goodman, a young insurance man who lost his mom, and for reasons vaguely yet repeatedly explained, decided to stay in his small town with his grandma when his dad left to become a detective in the big Pocket Monster city. When his dad also dies (it was a fiery car explosion, as seen in an intro wherein Mewtwo has a thrilling battle with a sedan), Tim heads off to Ryme City. Basically to clean up his dad’s apartment.
There, he runs into archetypically brassy young reporter and love interest Lucy (Kathryn Newton)—as well as the Ryan Reynolds’-voiced titular hero. Also, some kind of purple gas that makes Pokémon lose their shit for a few minutes. Following some completely unmemorable clues (there was, like, a paper with something about a dock on it? And… the gas vial had a letter on it?), they follow a plot that’s largely the plot of the actual game. With a few twists! One is immediately evident. Another is still confounding as of writing this. The third you can kind of see coming, but it isn’t any less ridiculous when it happens.
Yeah, it’s all pretty dumb, but it’s a film young Pokémon fans will likely eat up for just that unwaveringly straightforward story of the ball critters.
Detective Pikachu is directed by Rob Letterman, who before this shifted from mediocre computer-animated movies (Shark Tale, Monsters vs. Aliens) to mediocre computer-animation-filled Jack Black movies (Gulliver’s Travels, Goosebumps). And though the script and story he co-wrote is so riddled with clunkers that it never shouldn’t have gotten past four credited writers, let alone anyone higher up, damned if his experience in CGI doesn’t shine here.
The Pokémon themselves look fantastic, on model yet brilliantly re-interpreted for screen. Their fur and feathers and slimes not only feel correct—as someone pointed out on Twitter(?) recently, it’s not even like Pikachu nor many of these other guys were ever explicitly furry—but real, in a kind of surreal way. While there’s a tendency for filmmakers to show off all their expensive effects, Letterman lets his characters get underlit, out of focus, dirty, matted, and lost in a background. For once, someone shot some cartoon characters like they’re in a legit film. Shame that the result is as much an adaptation of Detective Pikachu as it is of Pokémon Snap, delightful in the photography but otherwise pretty thin.
Oh, and weirdly, it is explicitly part of the Home Alone universe, so get ready for the Wet Bandits to show up with some Squirtles in the sequel.
Grade: C-
Pokémon Detective Pikachu
Director: Rob Letterman
Studio: Warner Bros.
Runtime: 104 minutes
Rating: PG
Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Justice Smith, Bill Nighy, Kathryn Newton, Suki Waterhouse, Omar Chaparro, Chris Geere, Ken Watanabe
