Movie Review: Pokemon - Detective Pikachu

Pokemon: Detective Pikachu [2019]

I LOVE Pokemon. I've written more than a couple million words on Pokemon on this blog alone, let alone the hours and hours and hours I've poured into this franchise. And I'm not alone out there. Pokemon is a franchise that was the childhood of an entire generation, and when you have a franchise that's so beloved by so many people, when you decide to adapt something like it into a live-action adaptation, there is only two ways the hardcore fandom will react -- "this is the best thing ever!" or "this has ruined the franchise I love!"

Fortunately, Pokemon: Detective Pikachu, loosely based on the 3DS spin-off Pokemon game of the same name, has received nothing but praise from the fandom, and even critics that aren't as invested in the franchise as the fans relatively agree that while it's not the best movie, it's decent at worst. 

I'll get my criticisms of the movie out of the way first. My main criticism against this movie is... the soundtrack. Or rather, how little we hear of it. Some of the less-exciting, talking scenes really felt like they went on a bit too slowly and a bit too quietly, and I am genuinely baffled why they didn't fit in a bit more music here and there to make the more dramatic human-centric scenes a bit less bland. 

Speaking of said human-centric scenes... yeah, the humans in this movie is a bit bland. They don't ruin the movie exactly, but the scenes could definitely be compressed a little, and the humans in the movie really felt like they could have been a bit more interesting, y'know? I get that the focus of the movie has to be on the Pokemon (and Ryan Reynolds as Pikachu's going to be a scene-stealer no matter what) but Justice Smith's character, Tim Goodman, felt... I wouldn't call him bland, but definitely under-developed. The movie spends a bit too much time hammering home his sob backstory and his apathy at anything related to his father, and I kinda feel like we could've paced it a bit better. Likewise, Kathryn Newton's character, Lucy Stevens, plays up this almost cartoonish, over-excited lady reporter, but ultimately she's sort of pointless, her character arc is ultimately basic and felt more like a device to bring around Psyduck into the plot. Bill Nighy's character, Howard Clifford, is... he's a basic anime villain, I guess, with a decent hammy speech and an all-right insane motivation. I don't think I've much to say about any of the other human characters. They're all neat, but nothing to write home about.

Also Mewtwo totally kills dr. Laurent or whoever she is, didn't he? The movie glosses over that in all the exposition and the focus on Mewtwo, but Laurent and all the other scientists in that lab are just straight-up dead, aren't they? That is kinda dark but also completely glossed over.

And the plot is... it's basic? It's not too basic and there were some neat little plot twists here and there that you can definitely see coming, particularly with who the real villain is (Howard vs Roger Cliford), Mewtwo's true nature and what happened to Tim's dad. They're all relatively basic, and while I'm not the biggest fan of the "Pokemon and humans" combining plot point, the movie kind of sells it pretty well. I really sort of wished we had a bit more emphasis on the noir detective storyline, because the actual conspiracy was a wee bit jumbled and most of the story is given through us via exposition holograms, and that definitely hurt the movie's progression a fair bit. 

And while some people could argue at the utterly basic way that they treat some of the Pokemon lore -- "you've got to get a critical hit" being one of the more cringe-y lines in the movie -- the fact that they were genuinely faithful to the source material instead of making fun of it or lampshading the ridiculousness of the franchise is well-done and kudos to the writers for doing that. 

And honestly, I'm actually impressed that they ended up picking a setting in the Pokemon world that's new to both new viewers and long-time fans, because the setting of this town, Ryme City, is an experimental town where Pokemon and humans live side-by-side without Pokeballs and (legal) battling... while simultaneously acknowledging that, yes, the 'regular' Pokemon world exists outside Ryme City. The fact that we follow a relatively standalone plot from the pretty tired trope of a league challenge of a legendary Pokemon invading, and just sit down and have a-boy-and-his-Pokemon story, is also a very, very smart move, making the movie independent on its own merits while being faithful to the franchise, but at the same time, not inviting arguments on how it differs from the first episode of the series or whatever. 

I also really do love the sheer amount of care and love that the movie takes with the franchise. Video game adaptations have always been more miss than hit, sometimes attempts to "import" the video game's fantasy world into the real world, and sometimes to only vaguely adapt aspects of it while ignoring the majority of the game's lore. Not so for Pokemon: Detective Pikachu. Every single thing in the games/anime/manga is real, and the first scenes we get to see in this movie in a montage is Tim attempting to catch a Pokemon with a Pokeball, and a brief montage of a Pokemon league (with a cameo by Kamen Rider Drive's actor, Takeouchi Ryouma, as Red!) before going on and saying that, yeah, Ryme City is a wee bit different, and it's something new for all of you, both long-time fans and newbies. 

And the comedy in this movie! Sure, Ryan Reynolds goes all-out ham as a sarcastic, caffeine-laden amnesiac Detective Pikachu, and a gigantic amount of the comedy hinges on Ryan Reynolds' delivery of his lines. Reynolds doesn't go full-on Deadpool here, but there are a couple of subtle, more adult jokes snuck in and a couple of fart jokes thrown in. It's not so much that it's distracting, and the only time Pikachu swears are the two times that they were shown in the trailer, so it's not as potty-mouthed as I had feared it would be. 

Oh, and Psyduck's funny too. But we also have a staggering amount of references in the background of cute little shit like Snorlax blocking the road, or the joke about Cubone's dead mom, or Jigglypuff next to a sleeping person, or Treecko plastered on a window, or Ditto randomly turning into a person to push a wheelchair, or Loudred being used as loudspeakers... it's the sort of jokes that I genuinely didn't expect this movie to make considering how mainstream-oriented this is, but it's still making jokes that will fly above most people's heads, with only minimal explanation... but still managing to make it funny after a quick establishing that, say, "yes, Ditto changes into anything" or "yes,  Mr. Mime can only mime". 

There's also a fuck-ton of random easter eggs in the background like references to Pokemon species not seen in the movie, random little posters referencing Johto and Sinnoh and other regions, and... and honestly, moreso than any other movie I've seen in the past decade, I'm going to buy this on Blu-Ray just to soak in every single frame of this dang movie and do a listing of the easter eggs. 

And then there's the sheer usage of Pokemon in and of itself in the movie. Only a bunch of Pokemon get major roles in the movie -- primarily Pikachu, Psyduck and Mewtwo as the main characters, but several others (Snubbull, Mr. Mime, Bulbasaur, Greninja, Charizard, Gyarados, Torterra, Aipom, Ditto, Cubone and Pidgeotto) get heavy spotlight scenes, while most of them are relegated to the background. There's also only around, oh, 50-60+ species of Pokemon that they showcase, and a good chunk only appear once or twice in either the big crowd scene when Tim first enters Ryme City, and the huge night market scene. I guess they just didn't have the budget to make models for things like, say, Octillery or Snorlax or Slaking or Eevee to really show up multiple times? You can definitely tell that the animation team basically revert to Jigglypuff, Squirtle, Charmander, Treecko, Pancham and Sneasel as scene-fillers. 

Still, I know that it's honestly me being a nit-picky shit, and I'm just happy we got genuinely faithful replications of Pokemon at all. Instead of just importing a high-res version of the 3DS models, or just going full-on realistic abominations, every single Pokemon in this movie is done with loving care and love, giving them fur and scales while also keeping the proportions and silhouette and colour scheme entirely faithful to how they look like. Like, the Ludicolo might have leaf veins all over her hat and her body's furs are all individually separate, but she's still recognizably a Ludicolo. Charizard's body isn't just a formless, smooth orange skin and is covered with reptilian scales, but he's still recognizably a Charizard instead of a generic fire-breathing dragon. Torterra gets an amazingly gritty texture on both his tortoise head an the bonsai garden on his back, but he's also still recognizably Torterra. The only one where the realistic take looks 'off', I would say, is Mr. Mime, but he's always a pretty fucking weird design even without realism, so. 

I could go on and on about the individual Pokemon they feature in this movie, but I'm going to cut myself short here, because I'll just go on and on if I don't. My favourite background Pokemon moment has to be that brief pan of a grumpy Pangoro with a couple of Pancham crawling all over his shoulders, and he just off-handedly catches one that almost falls into the ground. Also great is that just one off-handed scene of Treecko sticking onto a glass pane when Tim went to investigate his father's apartment. Oh, and the swarm of Bulbasaur, Morelull and Flabebe is nothing short of magical and adorable. 

The story of the movie itself is pretty basic, and the trailers give away what's basically the first act. Tim Goodman is a kid who's always been distant with his father, blaming Pokemon as the reason why his father moved away to Ryme City and away from him, secretly really loving Pokemon as well. When his father is apparently killed in a mysterious car accident (that the audience knows involves a Mewtwo breaking free from a laboratory), Tim ends up going to Ryme City to put his dad's affairs in order, only to find the mysterious Detective Pikachu, who can only talk to him. 

And then almost immediately, Tim finds a mysterious little purple vial with "R" on it (you'd think it's Team Rocket, but it's entirely a red herring) and after a hilarious meeting with Reynolds Pikachu, ends up being attacked by a swarm of feral Aipom, driven mad by Compound R. Which is horrifying, because monkeys are scary, and Aipoms are also scary. After a bit of talk with Detective Pikachu, as well as meeting Lucy (and Psyduck!) and some character backstory, we end up in full on detective mode as we're rapidly shown a couple of suspects from the Clifford family, with the obvious red herring being the jackass son, Roger. 

And as Pikachu and Tim goes around investigating, we get to see a couple of fun sequences -- we get to the radio station, then meet up with Lucy, then the whole Mr. Mime sequence (it's amazing that they commit to this scene so much that it works), but a particular highlight for me is the underground battling ring, where it's something of an illegal sport to do in Ryme City. The Blastoise/Gengar fight is short but amazing, and Detective Pikachu fighting Charizard before all hell breaks loose when the underground fighting boss (played by Omar Chaparro) ends up accidentally unleashing Compound R on the entire underground ring's Pokemon spectators, driving everyone into a frenzy. The Magikarp/Gyarados joke in this felt a bit shoehorned in, but I dunno -- it sort of works?

It's this first half of the movie with Tim and Pikachu getting to know each other where the movie excels, with a significant amount of the story being focused on comedy, backstory and short bursts of action scenes here and there. There was a bunch of weird sexual tension awkwardness between Tim and Lucy that, as Detective Pikachu himself points out, is a bit cringey, but it's not that bad. Eventually, the quartet ends up going to investigate the former Mewtwo laboratory, where they find out a bit of a conspiracy thing going on, and the potential revelation that Harry Goodman's evil all along, capturing Mewtwo for the Clifford family to experiment on. 

Of course, they get attacked by a bunch of rabid Greninja, which are the other experimented Pokemon in the laboratory, and it's... it's definitely pretty awesome and also creepy. It's a tense little escape as our heroes run out of the laboratories and into the surrounding forest, and it ends up being Psyduck's headache exploding that blows away the Greninja, a hilarious yet also awesome conclusion to the setup of the "headache = walking bomb" jokes that the movie's been making throughout all of Psyduck's scenes. 

(Psyduck is adorable, and easily the best Pokemon in this movie)

And then we get the revelation that apparently the entire mountain range are apparently giant Torterra that are the results of the laboratory experimenting with Pokemon growth, causing a fuck-ton of scenes of our heroes running around as the terrain shift and move around them. While the giant Torterra is a bit random -- if neatly original to this movie -- I do feel like this scene ended up running a wee bit longer than it should. Pikachu gets pelted by a rock, and Tim ends up begging a nearby Bulbasaur to help him out... leading to the most adorable onion frog march as the Bulbasaurs (and Morelulls and Flabebes) lead him to a healing Pokemon... MEWTWO!

And Mewtwo (here voiced with both a male and female voice, in a pretty awesome overlay) initially ends up seeming to be a bit evil and a Pokemon supremacist, particularly due to how some lines and plot points are presented, and makes it look like Detective Pikachu, pre-amnesia, was working alongside Mewtwo as an accomplice to take out the Goodmans... but then Mewtwo gets captured by technology and taken in by the wheelchair-bound Howard Clifford. Pikachu and Tim split ways, with Pikachu blaming himself for Harry being missing, while Tim sort of confronts Howard...

And turns out that Howard's evil all along! I mean, it's sort of an obvious twist, but it's built up relatively well. Howard's plan to use the honestly kind-of convoluted way to drive Pokemon mad with Compound R and then use Mewtwo's abilities to combine humans and Pokemon as a way to achieve "evolution" is... it's honestly a bit out there and probably the weakest part of the movie at how absurd and out-of-nowhere it is, but after the awkward exposition, we get a couple of fun action scenes. 

Because, in perhaps the best twist in the movie that made the theater I watched the movie in go "ooh!" apparently the mysterious, quiet lady bodyguard with sunglasses and pink gloves... is a DITTO! It's a Ditto that can mimic humans, apparently, and the combined hilarity and horror of seeing a human with Ditto's button eyes as she shifts around a bunch of other Pokemon we've seen earlier in the movie, as well as a bunch of humans, is pretty creepy and awesome. The foreshadowing for this twist is great, too, with Ditto being shown briefly as a background gag earlier, and ms. Norman only showing to be the silent, tough type that communicates via text messages.

Meanwhile, as Ditto attacks Tim, Mewtwo-Howard enacts his doomsday plan, fusing people and Pokemon together, and it's up to Detective Pikachu, returning back to Ryme City after realizing what's going on and piecing a bunch of clues together off-screen, and we get a bit of an awesome fight sequence that involves Pikachu airborne on a Pidgeotto, and eventually culminating in a Volt Tackle that slows Mewtwo-Howard down enough for Tim (with assist from a freed Roger Clifford) to take out Ditto and subsequently the control device that Howard was using to take over Mewtwo. 

And with everything reverted to normal, Mewtwo reveals that Detective Pikachu's unique nature was because during the night of the accident (Pikachu and Harry had freed Mewtwo, and Howard's Greninjas are the ones that caused the accident), Mewtwo ended up fusing Harry and Pikachu into a single entity, sans memory. And... that's kind of a twisty ending? It's all good, though, as the final scene shows Harry restored to full human status, Pikachu is back in pika-pika mode, and Tim and Harry have a good relationship. Makes me sort of curious just how this movie's going to get that planned sequel. Ultimately, sort of an obvious conclusion.

I'll do a more dedicated "easter eggs" section for this movie, because the first draft was a bit too... too much of a lifeless list. Like that promised character-talk sequence for Avengers: Endgame, I'll take my time before talking about the nitpicky geeky details of this movie. 

Ultimately, the final part of the movie is a bit rough. The fact that Mewtwo's a bit of a walking plot device hurts the movie a bit, and I'm not the biggest fan of the convoluted doomsday plot... but honestly, it doesn't ruin my enjoyment of the movie at all, and it's definitely an entertaining movie and perhaps one of the most faithful adaptations of a non-comic-book franchises ever. 

I love this movie. It's not perfect but by god it is entertaining as all hell. Watch it. Even without being a huge Pokemon geek, I'd say that this is a neat, above-average movie that's only marred by shoehorned exposition and some flat acting at times.