REVIEW: 'Pokémon Detective Pikachu' discovers nostalgia, but not much else

Ryan Reynolds voices the titular Pokémon in Detective Pikachu, directed by Rob Letterman.

The problem with Ryan Reynolds’ movies is that you can’t un-see or un-hear Ryan Reynolds. His voice is so distinctive and his humour so crass, it can only be one guy. That’s mostly a good thing because he’s really good at what he does – making his audience laugh by feeling both dirty and sympathetic at the same time with his whippy, snappy sex jokes. That’s again the case with Pokémon Detective Pikachu, the first live-action film based on the Nintendo games that swept the entire world by storm in the mid-‘90s. The bar isn’t high (at all), but Detective Pikachu is the best video game adaptation in a graveyard of truly awful films, and for the most part, an enjoyable and safe entry into what is probably going to be a huge franchise.

Reynolds voices the titular yellow mouse, the Pokémon partner of police detective Harry Goodman in Ryme City, a place where humans and Pokémon live together in harmony. After Goodman dies mysteriously in a car accident, his son Tim (Justice Smith) joins forces with Pikachu and investigates. With the help of a young intrepid reporter, Lucy (Kathryn Newton), and her Psyduck, the foursome uncovers a mystery that centers around Mewtwo, a Pokémon created by scientists with powerful psychic abilities who was also the villain in Pokémon: The First Movie.

Pokémon has attracted controversy in the past for its portrayals of animals as captives and used mercilessly as tools of conquest and discovery, but the movie stays away from all of that here. There are still Pokémon battles, but they’re “underground” and therefore presumably illegal, and it makes a pretty big statement on animal testing with Mewtwo. Even with Reynolds in the title role, it is very controversy-free and very few adults will object to it while accompanying their kids.

The kids are the target audience, so all of the Pokémon have to look cute and cuddly. Pikachu is all sorts of fluffy and sassy, the travelling group of squeaking Bulbasaurs are a delight, and the giant earthquake-inducing Torterras really give you a sense of awe and wonder, the kind that kept so many kids (including yours truly) hooked. Visually, the Pokémon are all top-notch, but the cinematography is basic and sometimes annoying with its use of bright light and dark shadows to obscure faces, which is not unlike anime but also an extremely boring way to create dramatic tension.

And that brings us to the worst part, which is the plot and the script. There isn’t much for the actors to work from, and with Reynolds doing his familiar wisecracking act, he’s really the only one who’s engaging. The resulting dialogue feels canned and unnatural, like a high school Shakespeare play that seems more occupied with getting the lines right than conveying the right feeling. It’s a straightforward whodunit with a death that’s not really a death and a good guy who’s not really a good guy, and it’s also willing to hold your hand throughout the entire thing; at one point, Pikachu even brings a magnifying glass to his face and says, “Oh, that’s a twist… that is very twisty.”

There’s hope for this franchise. After the first film grossed $85 million, the four subsequent films all suffered from poorer and poorer box office numbers, with the final Pokemon Heroes grossing less than $1 million in North America. Detective Pikachu has already grossed around $400 million worldwide on a reported $150 million budget, and even with marketing costs included will likely turn a healthy profit for Warner Bros.

It’ll be interesting to see where they take it from here. The ending to Detective Pikachu leaves some questions about how Reynolds will (or could) return as Pikachu. The guess is that the film was meant to be a one-off, but given its success has already demanded a sequel that Warner Bros. may not have been prepared for. Being underprepared has spelled disaster for the studio in the past, from the rushed Justice League and DCEU movies to the streaming show Swamp Thing, recently cancelled after just one season.

Pokémon Detective Pikachu gets two and half stars out of four.