Pokemon Detective Pikachu: What is a Pikachu anyway?

At the insistence of my enthusiastic 7 year old I went along to see Pokemon Detective Pikachu, bear in mind that I have never seen a single minute of anything in the Pokemon universe.  This should be fun.

I am of an age that the Pokemon craze completely passed me by.  I was too old when the cartoons were on TV and everyone was collecting the cards or playing the games.  Now, I like to think that I am a very well clued up on most areas of popular culture and while I may not have watched or immersed myself in everything, Game of Thrones is an example, I can still hold a conversation about it or have a rough idea what it is about.  One of the exceptions to this is Pokemon.  I could not tell you one thing about it, I have no idea about what a Pokemon is, I have no clue about the universe, in fact the only thing I do know about it is the catchy “Gotta Catch ’em all” theme tune from the TV series.  If that wasn’t bad enough, my 7 year old, with the exception of watching the trailer to Detective Pikachu had never watched a single minute of Pokemon either.  Surely the pair of us going to see this is a recipe for disaster…

In the world of Pokemon, 21 year old Tim (Justice Smith) is a bit of a loner, so much so that he doesn’t even have a Pokemon partner. He works as an Insurance Adviser after giving up his dream of being a Pokemon trainer, following the death of this mother.  When he gets the news that his estranged father Harry, who is a hot shot detective working in Ryme City (a futuristic city where humans and Pokemon live side by side) has been killed in a suspicious car accident, he goes to settle his affairs.  As he is closing down his fathers apartment he comes across Pikachu (voiced by Ryan Reynolds), Harry’s Pokemon partner who has survived the crash but has lost his memory.  Tim is able to understand Pikachu (something no human should be able to do).  Together they must team up to get to the bottom of what happened to Harry, restore Pikachu’s memory and stop a mysterious villain from releasing a gas that could destroy all Pokemon in Ryme City and beyond.

On the face of things, if I was being brutally honest with myself, Detective Pikachu should be a pretty terrible film.  The story is poor, in fact it is so poor that it simply follows a pretty bog standard mystery plot that anyone over the age of 7 should be able to guess the outcome in the first 20 minutes.   It also feels the need to stop every 15 or 20 minutes for a big long piece of expositional dialogue to let the audience know what has either just happened or to sign post what is coming in the next scene.

As much as it welcomes the newcomer with an overview in the first act as to what a Pokemon is, it doesn’t really expand too much on what they do or why they do it, so by the time the characters are taking about Mewtwos, Torterras and Greninjas I found myself a little confused.  Which in turn made the main villains plan utterly baffling to me and the rest of the uninitiated parents sat in the audience.

The action and CGI are both pretty hit and miss.  Pikachu himself is great, I mean what is not to love about a small yellow hamster-like creature in a Sherlock Holmes dearstalker, that sounds like Ryan Reynolds?  The other Pokemon don’t fair as well, Mewtwo in particular isn’t as well realised.  While the action scenes are fun, the escape from the Torterra Garden and Pikachu’s battle in the night club being the standouts, they just don’t feel as polished as they should be.

In spite of all of that, the film an absolute joy to watch. There is one reason and one reason only for this and that is Ryan Reynolds.  Reynolds provides the voice and motion capture for Pikachu and the film owes him everything.  His vocal performances is a treat and because of this not only are you willing to forgive the films many short comings, you just don’t care about them.  You are just waiting to hear what Reynolds says next (his version of “gotta catch ’em all” is hilarious).  His dialogue is genuinely funny as well as being razor sharp with a knowing nod to the fact that a great many of the people watching the film don’t know their Dittos from their Jigglypuffs.  He so naturally plays off Justice Smith’s straight man that it feels like a 90s buddy comedy at times, with even (very slight) shades of the odd couple in there.  The scene where Tim and Pikachu interrogate a Mr Mime is stand out for its almost surreal comedy and its slight dark overtones.

Justice Smith brings a charming awkwardness to Tim and some of the films best moments come when Pikachu is lamenting just how bad he is with women as he tries to form a sentence when talking to budding reporter Lucy (a suitably feisty turn by Kathryn Newton).  Bill Nighy shows up and phones it in as a kind of John Hammond style eccentric billionaire who created Ryme City and Rita Ora is every bit as bad as you would expect in a mercifully small role.

I can not state enough how little I know about Pokemon, but I do know comedy and I know a brilliantly delivered joke when I hear one and Reynolds delivers plenty.  As any parent who takes their kids to the cinema will know it can be a lottery, for every Paddington 2 or Toy Story 3 there are a million Emoji Movies or Smallfoots out there.   I will say this for Detective Pikachu, it made me laugh (a lot), it made the kid laugh, it kept us both in our seats and despite my football team fighting a relegation battle during the run time, it kept my hand away from my phone.  As a family movie it more than did its job.

While I would not go as far to say that following Pokemon Detective Pikachu, either me or the kid are Pokemon converts, if there is a sequel to this and Ryan Reynolds is involved, then I will be there.  An unexpected treat.

Thanks for reading.  Hope you folks enjoyed yourselves, catch ya later on down the trail.