REVIEW: First – a confession. I was born in ’81, so I’m too old to have really gotten into Pokémon when they first became a thing in North America. I never played the games, avoided the cartoon and the movies like the plague, and even when the critters make a comeback with Pokémon Go, I was pretty much in the dark about the whole phenomenon. I don’t know the world – I don’t know the rules. In short – I don’t know squat about Pokémon.
Luckily, I had something of an ace up my sleeve when I saw POKÉMON: DETECTIVE PIKACHU, as I saw it with my girlfriend, who was big into Pokémon back in the day. She played all the games on Gameboy Color and Gameboy Advance, watched the cartoon, and for a while really loved Pokémon Go, so I had something of a tutor in the ways of the franchise sitting with me as I watched this. Good thing too, because let me tell you, for most of the movie I was lost!
As far as I can tell, Pokémon are magical creatures that live alongside humans (or in the wild?) and need to be caught and trained? But they’re not slaves, they do it willingly??? And humans have no idea what the Pokémon are saying because the essentially just repeat their names over and over? Luckily, DETECTIVE PIKACHU has a way around that, with Justice Smith’s Tim able to somehow understand what Pikachu is saying, thus sparing us two hours of Ryan Reynolds saying “Pika Pika” over and over again.
In this, Pikachu is like a PG-rated Deadpool, cracking wise and trying to solve the murder of his partner, although his memory’s been wiped clean so he has no idea what happened or who he really is. The focus here is on his buddy-buddy relationship with Smith, who’s a late-teen/young adult harboring resentment at his absentee dad and being a bit of a Pokémon hater thanks to his dad’s pre-occupation with the species.
From there, it follows a typical buddy cop formula, with everyone involved clearly trying to make this a millennial WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT, although it not nearly on par with that. The problem is, there’s essentially no entry point here for anyone who didn’t grow up on Pokémon. My girlfriend, who loved the franchise, thoroughly enjoyed this, while I thought it was cute and mildly diverting, but not much more.
Ryan Reynolds will be the thing that pulls non-fans into the film, and sure enough, his shtick is mostly pleasing, if familiar. Justice Smith is a likable lead, although he’s very passive throughout and doesn’t have much of an arc. His love interest, played by Kathryn Newton, is a likable cub reporter, but likewise is fairly low-key, not getting too much to do. This is all about the Pokémon, although it’s amusing to see Bill Nighy turn up as the billionaire patron of the critters saying the word “Pokémon” over and over. The same thing goes for Ken Watanabe, who has a smallish role as the chief of police – his role is so small it’s like he filmed it on a break from GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS.
While it was a mixed bag for me, I do have to give director Rob Letterman some credit, because the film has a distinctive look, while the CGI for the creatures themselves is on point. Give WB props for clearly putting a ton of resources into what they hope will be another big franchise. Whether it is or not remains to be seen. My feeling is that Pokémon fans will love it, as will kids. For non-fans though, I dunno. It’s cute but I’m also not overly excited by the idea of a Pokémon cinematic universe. That’s fine though. I’m relaxed enough as a critic to know when something’s not for me, and the audience it is for will probably love it.