Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars
Bottom Line: Yes, I went to see this movie. No, it wasn’t bad at all.
I do not know how this movie was made. I imagine a pitch meeting where someone had spiked the water with LSD. The entire premise is ridiculous. A guy loses his father and discovers that he and his father’s Pikachu Pokemon can talk to each other and they team up to solve the mystery of his father’s death. Oh, and this all takes place in a live action environment. Oh, and we’ll somehow get Ryan Reynolds to play Detective Pikachu. It’s preposterous on its face. Yet, it kind of works. This is not stellar movie making by any stretch of the imagination and it is clearly marketed as a vehicle to stretch the Pokemon brand into a new generation of young minds, but it’s kind of fun for what it is.
The star of this show is clearly Ryan Reynolds. He seems to know he is in something silly and just goes with it. He has lots of asides and comments that are easy to miss between the rest of the dialogue that is happening, but you really want to pay attention to him. Imagine Deadpool were a sweet, innocent Pikachu and you have Reynolds’ performance in this movie. The rest of the cast is fine. Justice Smith is a bit uneven as Tim Goodman and is more believable talking to a fake Pikachu than when talking to other actors. Kathryn Newton does an acceptably over-the-top job as Lucy Stephens.
The story tries to throw some plot twists into the mix, but none of them land terribly well and much of that is even thrown completely away when the final evil plan is revealed. None of it really makes sense and it detracts greatly from the movie, but up until that point, it’s pretty fun.
If you’ve got nothing else to do, this is a fun and stupid movie to go see. Not being a Pokemon person, I cannot say if they got all the Pokemon references correct or if there were lots of little Easter eggs for Pokemon fanatics, but they give you enough information so that even if you’re a Pokemon novice, you can tell what’s going on with all the different creatures. Pika pika.