Pokemon: Detective Pikachu

I’ll admit, there was a phase in my life where I was really into Pokémon. More the trading card and card game aspects as opposed to the anime, films and the large library of video games. Still that was years ago and I lost interest in the franchise as a whole. What that means is I never played the detective Pikachu games. But I have seen the Detective Pikachu movie, which is what this is about.

Whilst I’m aware there have been plenty of Pokémon movies, this is the first I’m aware of that was produced in English. It’s also the first Nintendo Movie since Super Mario Brothers, The First Live Action Pokémon Film, and the first Pokémon film distributed theatrically in the US since 2003. Not to say Pokémon has been dormant since then, not with the thousands of Pokémon games that seem to come out all at once and introduce new and ever sillier looking Pokémon.

But I digress, I’ve never played Detective Pikachu, but I thought the concept was interesting enough that I decided to give it a watch.

We open with a guy named Tim Goodman (Justice Smith) he’s a bit of a loser, struggling to catch even a pretty low-level Pokémon and happy with his little life selling insurance in a small town. But word reaches him that his father, who worked as a detective in a place called Ryme City, was killed in a car crash.

Tim heads out to close his father’s affairs and meets a girl named Lucy Stevens, an amateur reporter who’s convinced there’s more to this than meets the eye. And she might just be right as Tim discovers an amnesiac Pikachu who only he can understand (voiced by Ryan Reynolds) and a sample of a substance that turns Pokémon crazy. Can Tim, Pikachu, Lucy and her Psyduck Partner unravel the mysteries and find the killer?

It's amazing looking back there is a lot wrong with the mystery itself, and by that I mean the Climax, where the truths are revealed and there’s action. Credit to them the action looks decent but the big plan of the story, it’s maybe a tad underwhelming. Howard Clifford (Bill Nye) wants to become a Pokémon so he can evolve past his wearing body, fine, but I don’t understand why he intends to do the same thing to everyone else, or why his method for doing this is so easily reversible. Then Mewtwo solves the mystery of Tim’s father and brings him back to life, serving as a bit of a dues ex-machina.

So, if the climax doesn’t do it for me, why do I still like this film. Most Pokémon are by definition pretty one-dimensional but I recognised enough of them to squee a little. I like the Charizard Fight and the bit with Mr Mime. The set-piece with the giant city Pokémon was great, and I’m sucker for the arc Tim went through in this, realising that his perception of how things were after his mother got a case of the Disney Moms wasn’t entirely true.

Lucy is fine, I’ve seen her character done better and I don’t like that she gets written out of the climax before doing anything of substance but for what there is, I don’t mind it, her and Tim have a little chemistry to work with.

OK, time to discuss the elephant in the room, or should that be the Pikachu. Ryan Reynolds’ material in this is… not his best. Lots of coffee and fart jokes, and lines that feel out of place for this character, even bearing in mind what we find out about all this in the end. Still, I didn’t find him especially grating and I did think he and Tim played decently off each other.

I actually quite liked the visuals, the Pokémon fit decently into this world, despite being CG and there’s quite a variety of them seen throughout the film. It may take some getting used to but it’s suited to purpose.

Detective Pikachu is a solid, if unremarkable movie. The performances are fine enough and the visuals are good enough. The story needs a lot of fine-tuning especially with the rather underwhelming climax but I can’t say I came out of watching this feeling upset or miserable.

Rating 65/100