I’ve always loved Pokémon. It’s perhaps my favorite thing in life. Video games, anime, trading card games, and so on. You could likely imagine just how excited I was for Pokémon Detective Pikachu, even with films like Avengers: End Game and Us currently in cinemas. Sadly, the excitement faded away about a quarter deep into the movie.
Now, I’ll give the film some credit, it’s likely great for kids. But if a Pikachu movie has Deadpool actor Ryan Reynolds as the voice of the yellow mouse itself, it should be a little more adult-like in humor. I’m not saying it’s all bad, Detective Pikachu does have some comical moments. In fact, my girlfriend chuckled on numerous occasions, but I found very few scenes to be funny. An example of this would be when Pikachu and Tim (played by Justice Smith, most known for his part in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom) find themselves interrogating a Mr. Mime, and if you know Pokémon, well, you can just picture how well that went.
The animation of the Pocket Monsters is very well done, we’ve all seen some images of the creatures by now. Pikachu is as cute as ever, Charizard looks scarier than we’ve ever seen him, and Magikarp, well, he’s still a fish. The disappointment follows, though, when you realize it’s truly a Pikachu movie. There’s very little focus on the world of Pokémon, which one could argue is to be expected, besides a Psyduck who gets more than enough screen time alongside Mewtwo. We do get to witness the action from Gyarados, Aipom, and even Greninja, but I just would have liked more focus on what we’re used to when it comes to Pokémon; namely, battles.
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Instead, the focus is on the story, which, regardless of how I feel about the story itself, paces itself quite well. The opening of Pokémon Detective Pikachu does give you the nostalgic Pokémon feel. From there, it progresses into almost like a murder mystery, but you know, for kids. We get introduced to some interesting and well-varied characters along the way, including a young reporter Lucy (played by Kathryn Newton, who had a short on run Supernatural and was in Paranormal Activity 4), who’s trying to hit the big time with her company and Roger (Chris Geere, most known for the TV series You’re The Worst, a personal favorite).
I won’t say much else about the story and leave it for yourself to experience, but I will say the ending lacked creativity. I found myself very disappointed, but can say that as a family film, Pokémon Detective Pikachu works.
