I remember going to the store with my father in the 1990s to pick up Pokémon Red Version for Game Boy. I played across the map of the Pokémon universe battling gym leaders, catching as many of the 151 original Pokémon, finding rare candies, and triumphing over the Elite Four. In this nostalgia, I went to see “Pokémon Detective Pikachu.”
“Pokémon Detective Pikachu” is a story about 21-year-old Tim Goodman (Justice Smith) returning to Ryme City to wrap up his father’s affairs after learning of his death in the line of duty as a police detective. Tim meets an electrifying Pikachu (voiced by Ryan Reynolds) convinced that his father was killed under suspicious circumstances. Together, they embark on an investigation that leads them to the highest chambers of power in the Pokémon world.
Despite a stellar opening weekend at the box office, “Pokémon Detective Pikachu” is an underperforming story with a necessary message for filmgoers.
Let’s start with the story. Without giving away spoilers, the story is an absolute mess.
The twists, if they aren’t already apparent from the trailer, are obvious and confusing when you step back and think about the story for more than five minutes. More frustrating is that the outcome is beyond confusing and as uncompelling as it is strange.
Secondly, while holding true to the video game on which the movie is based, the film lacks all of the cohesion and premise of the Pokémon universe. There is literally one Pokémon battle (Gengar beats Blastoise? Give me a break). None of the original Pokémon story is relevant, and the plot feels like a comment on a dystopian universe where Ayn Rand and PETA have a love child and the world has to go to the theater to watch it. If you replace the Pokémon with regular animals, you’d understand my meaning within the shallow context of the story.
Strangely, for a movie of this cultural value, the acting is bad.
Justice Smith fumbles through his lines and delivers such a flat performance that Professor Oak no doubt wouldn’t have given him a Pokémon to start his journey (we all picked Squirtle, right?). Kathryn Newton plays a tenacious reporter/intern at CNM (CNN, let’s be honest) yet is neither interesting nor persuasive as her character. Most of her lines are so ridiculous, it’d make anyone aspirational about being a screenwriter one day. It’s as if both actors were tasked with playing caricatures of a grieving son curbed by his father’s neglect and apparent, secondary mysterious vanishing and an ambitious female reporter on the verge of a big break but answering to an antiquated patriarchal system. It’s notably peculiar.
Ryan Reynolds isn’t quite a thunderbolt as Pikachu, but he is clearly the only light in the movie. He voices the character as a mix of Deadpool and Van Wilder. As much as the writing allows him, Reynolds delivers. However, Pikachu’s arc, without mentioning spoilers, is particularly strange and speaks more fully to the twist-twist-huh that this Pokémon movie proffers.
The theme is particularly redeeming. Tim’s relationship with his father undergoes stress and ultimately ends when his father becomes obsessed with Pokémon rather than a relationship with his son. The neglect, distance, and emotional damage we observe is a telling reminder of what we know to be a quintessential aspect of the human condition: Boys need their fathers especially during formative years. While underdeveloped, the movie’s motif is transparent and a necessary reminder.
“Pokémon Detective Pikachu” isn’t as sleuthing as audiences might like but does deliver on some of the nostalgia from Pokémon’s roots. We can only hope that if this saga continues that it learns from some of the missteps of this film and evolves.
[Also read: How Rockstar Games can save ‘Red Dead Redemption 2’]
Tyler Grant (@TyGregoryGrant) is a Young Voices contributor, who completed a Fulbright Fellowship in Taiwan. He writes movie reviews for the Washington Examiner.
