Movie Review: Pokémon Detective Pikachu

Pokémon Detective Pikachu

Director: Rob Letterman

Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Justice Smith, Kathryn Newton, Bill Nighy, Ken Watanabe

Rating: PG

Runtime: 104 minutes

I’ve been a fan of Pokémon for as long as I can remember. I was raised on the show, played the trading card game sparingly (I vaguely remember going to a Pokémon festival and playing the card game in the tent. I didn’t understand it at all, but it’s the thought that counts.) I played the games as a kid, watched the fan films and for as long as I can remember playing Pokémon, I’ve wanted a proper Pokémon film. Specifically, a live-action Pokémon film. Unfortunately, I knew it was a pipe dream. Surely no Pokémon film could ever release in live action? And even if it did, surely it wouldn’t be able to break the video game curse?

15 years after I started playing Pokémon, I’m happy to say that a Pokémon movie is the one to break the curse. You know, before that Sonic movie probably causes the curse to reappear. God, I’m scared about the Sonic movie. Anyway, back to the main feature of the review.

Detective Pikachu is about, well, a Pikachu who is a detective teaming up with a man named Tim Goodman to try and uncover the mystery of what happened to Tim’s father. It’s basically quite the standard (and weirdly, good) mystery film plot, but with Pokémon inserted into it. It’s incredibly fun, and funny at the same time. Along the way, they’ll encounter seemingly evil business tycoons, and a young wannabe reporter named Lucy Stevens. It’s not the most solid plot in the world, but it functions, and it’s fun to watch. The issue is, it’s also very predictable. I guessed the big twist of the film around 5 minutes into the film and spent the rest of the duration being fed information that I’d already worked out.

The acting isn’t without its flaws either. Ryan Reynolds is great as the titular Detective Pikachu, funny and heartwarming in equal measure. But most of the human characters, bar Bill Nighy’s Howard Clifford and Kathryn Newton’s Lucy Stevens, are either dull or just badly acted. Justice Smith is just not very interesting, and his role as Tim Goodman is very much written by committee, in that it’s just him playing generic character archetype #1. Still, he does shine in certain moments, mainly his comedic exchanges with Pikachu himself. Ken Watanabe is also in this film, as the chief of police, and I think at the time of first watching Detective Pikachu, the last time he’d appeared in a film I was watching was Inception. Needless to say, it’s a very different role.

Who would have thought that Rob Letterman, the man who directed Shark Tales and the 2010 Jack Black Gulliver’s Travel remake, would be the one to be an actually decent video game movie? Fun, but flawed, Pokémon Detective Pikachu is still a great film for fans of the franchise and newcomers alike.