If ever a movie series would be perfect for a live action reboot, Pokemon was it. Clearly when kids were being lured into traps trying to “Catch ‘Em All!” with the Pokemon App, there’s an appetite for putting those adorable creatures into something resembling the real world. Detective Pikachu pairs the kid friendly Pokemon with a fun whodunit mystery that makes is a perfectly enjoyable popcorn flick you can watch and leave ready for a whimsical sleep.
After a mysterious accident at a laboratory, we met our main human character, insurance salesman Tim (Justice Smith) failing to capture a Pokemon partner. Tim’s desire for a partner has lessened since his dad died under mysterious circumstances, according to his dad’s partner Hideo Yoshida (Ken Watanabe). When Tim starts cleaning up his father’s apartment, he gets accosted twice. Once by journalist intern Lucy Stevens (Kathryn Newton), who believes Tim’s dad died because of nefarious doings of her parent corporation, Clifford Enterprises. The other is Tim’s dad’s Pokemon, a Pikachu (voiced by Ryan Reynolds) who doesn’t believe Tim’s dad is dead, and needs Tim’s help to piece together what exactly happened.
Sorry everyone: Detective Pikachu isn’t a revelatory piece of auteur filmmaking that will change the landscape of cinema as we know it. But, if you created a list of things a summer movie should do, Detective Pikachu has pretty much all of them. The live action CGI is pretty great: I heard multiple people fawning over how cute each of the Pokemon are. For anyone who’s a Pokemon fan, you get LOTS of fan service: battles with Charmanders, Mewtoo mind control, Jiggly Puff putting people to sleep singing. You even get callbacks to previous Pokemon films and their theme songs! Fan service – check. The banter between Ryan Reynolds and Justice Smith is pretty funny most of the time: Reynolds’s shtick is almost as good in PG as it is in R, probably because Justice Smith’s reactions sell the banter to the audience. And the movie’s plot walks that fine line of being serious but not too scary, and twisty enough that you’ll keep guessing as to who the bad guy is (I guessed wrong a few times). And finally, there’s a pretty fun fight between Pokemon during a parade where Pikachu is flying across rooftops blowing up gigantic balloons.
Clocking in at 1 hour, 45 minutes, Detective Pikachu also will keep your kids’ attention span just long enough to get out of the movie, bursting with excitement that you’ll have to go to a toy store or Amazon and buy a Pokemon immediately. Just make sure to draw boundaries. You don’t want your kids discovering that app, and wandering toward abandoned vehicles in empty parking lots searching for a Mewtoo, or Pikachu, or whatever.