Movie Reaction: Detective Pikachu

Formula: Pokemon: The First Movie * Film noir

The most disappointed I ever remember being by a movie was when I saw the first Pokemon movie back in 1999. It was a perfect mix of factors. I was 11. It was a high point for the Pokemon craze. I was playing the games, collecting the cards, and watching the show. The idea of a Pokemon movie sounded like a slam dunk. This is a series based on the idea of diverse and interesting-looking creatures with cool powers kicking the shit out of each other. What's not to love? All the movie had to do was move the Pokemon battle idea to a cinematic scale. I mean, Power Rangers did that well just three years before*. I'll admit, I don't remember Pokemon: The First Movie well. All I remember is a climax that was just a bunch of Pokemon clones impotently fighting each other. Mew playfully defeated Mewtwo, who spent too much time pondering the meaning of existence. It was almost an apology for what people loved about the series: fighting pocket monsters. Maybe I'd appreciate it more now, but that movie had me so furious at the time that I doubt anyone could convince me to see it again.

*I've gone back and rewatched the Power Rangers movie as an adult. I realize that it is very bad. I've apologized to my parents for making them see that.

As a series, Pokemon has always had a problem figuring out how to appeal to its fan base. They always seem to err of the side of being "kid-friendly" rather than "for all ages". This is a subtle but important distinction that, for example, Pixar has made billions of dollars off of understanding. The end of the first Pokemon movie ends up looking more like The Care Bears Movie than the Power Rangers Movie. These are the same people who thought that Pokemon Snap was a better idea for the first N64 Pokemon game than Pokemon Stadium (why would we want Pokemon to fight when we could just take pictures of them instead?). So, it comes as no surprise that when Nintendo decided to make its first "live-action" Pokemon movie, it's a movie like Detective Pikachu, which villainizes the battle game play that has made the series so enduring and only occasionally nods to the fans over the age of 10.

Look, the story of this movie sounds crazy even if you are familiar with the series already, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time explaining the Pokemon world itself. You have to know what Pokemon are to see this.  Detective Pikachu is about Tim (Justice Smith), a former Pokemon trainer who has moved on to a boring adult life without a Pokemon buddy. After his long-estranged father goes missing, he travels to Ryme City, a city where man and Pokemon live as equals. There, he meets a Pikachu who can talk to him and only him. This Pikachu has lost his memory and thinks he's a detective. Because plot, Tim and Pikachu team up with a similarly-aged reporter, Lucy (Kathryn Newton), to uncover a massive conspiracy that ties together Tim's father's disappearance and Pikachu's memory loss. It's a massively convoluted plot, and the less you think about it, the better.

The real selling point of the movie is all the Pokemon. The talking Pikachu is voiced by Ryan Reynolds, acting in a very sarcastic Ryan Reynolds way. It's a lot of fun once you get used to it. I enjoyed seeing all the different Pokemon pop up throughout the film. Lucy has a Jigglypuff which Pikachu pokes fun at mercilessly. There are a lot of jokes about what the hell Mr. Mime is. Dozens of Pokemon pop up for bits or sight gags. A couple even have a plot function. The CGI for the Pokemon looks good in the live-action setting. I had my concerns about that going in. They don't look particularly "real", but within a couple minutes, I adapted to to look of the world.

The movie doesn't take itself too seriously. Ryan Reynolds of course cracks jokes the entire time. Kathryn Newton plays a heightened version of her character that screams "I'm in a silly movie". The same goes for Bill Nighy, Ken Wantanabe, and Chris Greere. Everyone is in on the joke. Justice Smith is the straight man. Most of the work selling this world as "real" goes to him. To his credit, he does that well, but it comes at the expense of his character being all that interesting.

I enjoyed watching this movie even though it didn't give me much of what I wanted. There are almost no Pokemon battles. The only thing holding this world together logically is the implicit agreement with the audience not to question anything about it. The story relies too much on deus ex-Mewtwo for plot or explanations. This works very well as a standalone movie but not as a launching point for an extended film universe. I definitely left this a lot happier than the 1999 movie. A low bar, but it easily cleared it.

Verdict: Weakly Recommend