Detective Pikachu Review

As a child of the 90's, the Pokémon craze was quite the wild one. Given that I was in Elementary School when it hit its height here in the United States, I was very much swept into it. I collected and traded Pokémon cards. In fact, I still have that collection with me in my apartment. I spent many hours of my life playing the Pokémon games, even though I technically have not spent one second of my life playing on the actual Gameboy itself. We downloaded emulators and roms onto the computer and played them that way. But I remember that my friends and I could sit at the computer and just play away without even talking to each other. I think I have that original generation of games (Blue, Red and Yellow) practically memorized. Gen 2 is fun, too, but nothing beats the nostalgia of the OG. And, of course, I faithfully watched the anime every Saturday morning. I mean, if you don't remember what it was like being devastated when Ash let Butterfree go, I don't know how you can truly understand Pokémon. Even though I eventually grew older, I never fully grew out of that phase. Pokémon is, and will forever be, ingrained in my heart and soul. So of course I'm going to pumped at the idea of them finally making a live-action Pokémon movie.

It may sound crazy, but a live-action Pokémon movie has secretly been a dream of mine since I was a little kid. I always thought it would be really cool to see what the all the Pokémon would look like in live-action form. Did I ever think it was going to happen? No, not really. And I certainly didn't anticipate it being "Detective Pikachu" that would be the first live-action Pokémon movie. If we were going to do a live-action Pokémon movie, I always thought it would be more in line with the anime or the original Gameboy games. Admittedly, though, I'm not up to par on my modern Pokémon. While I stick to my statement of never really growing out of my Pokémon phase, Pokémon kinda moved on without me. I never made it past Gen 3 in the games. Not until the last few months, anyways, when I started playing Gen 4 for the first time. For context, Gen 8 comes out on the Switch later this year, so that's how far behind I am. Along those lines, I don't think I ever got passed the second season of the anime and I haven't collected a new Pokémon card since Elementary School. I also never played Pokémon Go, but that's more because my phone wasn't compatible with it. So "Detective Pikachu" certainly wasn't on my radar until they announced the movie.

In my defense, though, "Detective Pikachu" is really new. It was released in Japan in February 2016, but not worldwide until last year, March 2018. From what I hear and read about, the game is a lot different than your typical Pokémon game. Instead of focusing on catching wild Pokémon, training them, battling trainers, then eventually beating the Pokémon League, "Detective Pikachu" is much more of an adventure, mystery game focused on story. While all the other Pokémon games certainly have a story, people don't play them for the Team Rocket story arcs or whatever. It's all about catching Pokémon and battling. And actually it's mostly the same with the anime. The fun with the anime was Ash making it to the next gym battle or discovering new Pokémon. The Team Rocket stuff was more of an entertaining side thing. The fact that the "Detective Pikachu" game is more focused on the story of Tim Goodman and a talking Pikachu finding Harry Goodman, Tim's father and Pikachu's owner, is probably why the choice was made to start with that game in terms of the live-action movies. If we're going to continue to try and make these video game movies work, it makes the most sense to find games that are story-based and adapt those instead of pulling stories out of thin air.

Along those lines, there might be some discussion as to whether this counts as a video game movie or if it's more along the lines of our recent trend of live-action anime adaptations ("Ghost in the Shell," "Alita: Battle Angel"). The real answer is that it's kinda both. It's like if you're debating if that "Old Town Road" song is rap or country. The answer is... yes. However, just like I would say "Old Town Road" is more rap than country, "Detective Pikachu" is more of a video game adaptation than an anime adaptation, especially since the anime in question was adapted from the video games to begin with. Because, yeah, the Gameboy games were released in Japan in 1996 followed by the anime premiering in Japan in 1997. That's why this works better than most video game adaptations. It already has worked. They took a game and turned it into a successful TV show over 20 years ago. Then they've taken said TV show and have already made a lot of different movies based on it, most of them being connected to the TV show. So a live-action movie is an easy next step. Maybe that's the key to success here with these video game movies. Find something that already has worked. Or find something wherein a movie adaptation is a logical step forward.

Also, the other reason why this is mainly a video game adaptation in my mind is that the story of this movie comes straight from said "Detective Pikachu" game. Again, I have not played the game, but I as just reading through the plot of the game on Wikipedia, and yep. It's the exact same. So let's dive into this movie. "Detective Pikachu" in a section of the Pokémon world where Pokémon and humans live in harmony with each other, rather than Pokémon being like wild animals that humans catch and train in order to fight against each other. We call this place Ryme City. In Ryme City we have a young adult named Tim Goodman, played by Justice Smith, who once had a dream to be a Pokémon trainer, but has since abandoned that dream and has become an insurance salesman. One day he gets a call that his dad, Harry Goodman, is presumed dead after a bad car accident where the car toppled over the edge of a bridge. So Tim travels to Ryme City, where his dad lived, to look through his apartment. That's where he finds a Pikachu that he can miraculously talk to. The Pikachu, voiced by Ryan Reynolds, informs Tim that he is a detective and is certain that Harry, Pikachu's former partner, is alive. But since Pikachu has lost his memory, the two need to work together to find him.

For me I thought this plot worked well enough. It's not necessarily this deep, impactful, twisty story, but Justice Smith as Tim Goodman is a likable protagonist and the father/son drama in the movie is emotional enough to get you hooked. Without the movie needing to dive into flashbacks, Justice Smith sells the emotion. He's obviously sad at the news that his dad has passed away, but there was a disconnect between him and his dad as his dad cared more about his work and his Pokémon stuff than he did raising a son, so there's some mixed emotions there. I'd say this is rather easily Justice Smith's best performance, although I barely remember him from "Paper Towns" and I found him extremely annoying in "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom," so there wasn't a high bar to jump over there. But if I was going to care about this movie, I needed to care about him. And I did. So that was a good start. And I also thought his lady friend, a young journalism intern who is hungry for the big scoop, was a fun character to partner with him. She's played by Kathryn Newton, who's been in a lot of smaller roles, but I personally know as having played Claire Novak from "Supernatural." I think the thing with her is that she was having a lot of fun and I found that infectious.

But, of course, who really makes this movie work is our title character. Ryan Reynolds' Pikachu. As strange as it may be to hear Deadpool playing Pikachu, for me it works. And it makes sense in context of the film given that, in the game, the voice for Pikachu also comes out of left field, sounding nothing like what you would think Pikachu sounds like. I mean, the normal Pikachu is voiced by a Japanese girl named Ikue Otani, who was 32 years old when the anime initially debuted in 1997 and has voiced Pikachu in pretty much everything since, including this movie. At now 54 years old, she's still got that Pikachu voice down. But yeah, she sounds nothing like Ryan Reynolds. However, Ryan Reynolds is able to disappear into this role in a way and perfectly encapsulate Pikachu. Even though he sounds like Ryan Reynolds, never once did it feel forced. It didn't sound like Deadpool voicing Pikachu. The personalities felt different. And on that note, Ryan Reynolds was on fire the whole movie. There was never a dull moment when he was on the screen, which just happened to be most of the movie. And it sounded like he had a blast voicing this character. If the actors are having a good time, then that often spills over into the audience.

But above all, what really just had me on Cloud Nine during this entire movie was the world itself. While the plot is good enough and the characters are written and acted well, there's a lot of things that you could nitpick at. You could point at the mustache-twirling villains and the predictable way in which the story goes. You could say this doesn't hit the emotional heights or that it doesn't dive super deep. And you wouldn't necessarily be wrong. But the thing that helped me overlook all of that was the way in which they brought all the Pokémon to life. Being that Ryme City is a place in which Pokémon live in harmony with humans, Pokémon are everywhere it is was a ton of fun looking at every frame of the movie and discovering all the Pokémon. It was great seeing how they all looked and how their personalities integrated into the city. The more you know about every Pokémon, the more fantastic this experience becomes. Thus this becomes very similar to last year's "Ready Player One" as this movie is loaded with references and Easter eggs at every turn. The more references you know, the funner it is. "Detective Pikachu" doesn't rely on this as a crutch, but rather it uses this to enhance every frame of the movie to give fans a richly rewarding experience.

Thus in a weird way, "Detective Pikachu" ends up being a lot like "Avengers: Endgame." No, it's not as good as "Endgame," but "Endgame" was a movie that rewarded fans of the MCU for remaining loyal for the last 22 films. I think the people who got rewarded the most were the people who had been with them the whole way. People who were only half interested in the franchise or had skipped a good portion of the movies were the people who weren't able to fully appreciate what "Endgame" accomplished as a big thank you letter to everyone who had stuck with them. In like manner, "Detective Pikachu" is not out to win any new fans. It spends no time taking people by the hand and teaching them what these things called Pokémon are. Rather, the movie banks on the fact that loyal Pokémon fans from the last 20+ years are going to be the ones who turn up and those specific fans are the ones that the movie is out to reward. And they do a dang good job at it. This is a movie where I didn't pay attention to any reviews, positive or negative, because I didn't care. This was a movie made for me because I've been a fan for 20 years. And if you've been a fan of Pokémon for a good portion of your life, then you also need to see this movie. I'm going to give "Detective Pikachu" an 8/10.