Detective Pikachu (2019) Movie Review

 Hey everyone! How were your weekends? Mine was pretty good. Yesterday was a little crazy because my parents and I went to church for the first time since before the pandemic hit, because they had an outdoor service so we felt that was safe for us to go to. Today I'm here to talk about the 2019 video game mystery movie, Detective Pikachu, starring Justice Smith as Tim and Ryan Reynolds as Pikachu. There will be spoilers, so if you have not seen this movie yet, then please go do that before reading this review, if you plan on watching it anyway. Let's get into it.

When this movie was announced in 2017 or 2018 I was both hesitant and excited for it to come out. Excited because it was a live action Pokemon movie. Hesitant because it's an adaptation of a video game franchise, with Ryan Reynolds voicing the character. Video game movies have not fared well over the years, and I wasn't expecting this to do any better. This was also before Sonic the Hedgehog came out in 2020, so studios weren't great at listening to the audience's criticism when it came to video game movies either. 

Detective Pikachu is a good movie but it's not a great movie. Don't get me wrong, I thought it was very good and I enjoyed watching it, but I found the movie to be very predictable and the mystery easy to solve. Particularly when it came to who the villain of the movie is. Which I'll talk about shortly. I did enjoy the characters and the world they built in this movie is incredible. I just found it to be too easy for a movie of this scope. As an audience member it should've been as hard for me to figure everything out as it was for Tim, Lucy, Pikachu and Psyduck to. It wasn't because I was about three steps ahead of the main characters the whole movie. Which isn't a bad thing because sometimes it creates some great tension as you wait for the characters to catch up to where you are in the story. In this case it was more like, "huh uh you could see that a mile away" without even trying. Before I get into the cast as a whole, I do want to talk about the two things that I figured out right away in this movie.

I figured out almost immediately that somehow Harry, Tim's father, was fused with his Pokemon partner, Pikachu and that's why he was able to talk to Tim beyond the usual "Pika pika" that we get from Pikachu in the Anime. Not to mention the amnesia thing was also a dead giveaway. 

As soon as Howard Clifford (Bill Nighy) appeared on screen, I knew immediately that Roger (Chris Geere), while a privileged dirtbag, wasn't the villain, Howard was. And unfortunately his motives are VERY flimsy. And it's also unfortunate that Howard is in a wheelchair due to some illness that he wishes to escape from, hence why he transferred his consciousness into Mewtwo at the end of the movie. I really did not want to have to talk about this in a Pokemon movie, but I guess I have to.

Making the disabled person be the villain is misrepresenting people with disabilities. Plain and simple. We are not villains to be feared and maligned. Nor are we helpless victims of circumstance or difficult to get along with or people to be pitied because we can't walk or have to adapt the way we do things. So please stop portraying us as such in movies and on TV. ESPECIALLY on TV. This is the second movie that I've reviewed this year where disabled people were misrepresented or portrayed poorly by able bodied people. The other one was Cheaper by the Dozen (2022). As a disabled person this bugs me to no end. I will never get "political" on this blog because I am here to review the things I enjoy and even some things that I don't. But, I will always talk about disability on here because I am disabled. 

Despite my problems with this movie, I did enjoy watching it and it is a good movie. The cast in this movie is phenomenal. I'm not a Deadpool fan, but I've loved Ryan Reynolds in everything I've seen him in, even in movies that weren't great like Green Lantern (2011). Justice Smith, Kathryn Newton, and Bill Nighy are all fans of Pokemon, which makes this movie more fun because they accept the premise of the franchise and put everything they can into their roles to make the world believable for that general audience that might not get Pokemon. And it makes the world more believable in the transition from animation to live action for those of us who grew up with the Anime.

The only cast members that I'm familiar with, even a little, are Ryan Reynolds, Ken Watanabe, and Bill Nighy. Nighy played Davy Jones in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, Watanabe has been in two movies that I've seen, Batman Begins (2005) and Godzilla (2014), and Ryan Reynolds is Ryan Reynolds and has been in many things that I've seen over the years. 

Justice Smith and Kathryn Newton are brand new to me and they worked pretty well for me. As Tim, Justice brings the emotional weight to the movie that it would've been lacking if this movie had just been another Ash/Pikachu adventure or if someone else had played Tim. As Lucy, Kathryn doesn't have a whole lot to do. We don't see very much of her until the final act and what we do get is wrapped up rather quickly so that the focus remains on Tim and Pikachu. But I still enjoyed the character and I liked her chemistry with Justice. If the movie ever gets a sequel, which from the sounds of it, it's not going to, I hope the writers give Lucy more to do because Kathryn did an amazing job in the role even with as little as she got to do.

Visually, the movie is a bit darker than what Pokemon generally is portrayed as in both the video games and the Anime, but in this case it works. Sort of. It works for a live action Pokemon movie made in the mid to late 2010s and it works for watching it on Blu-ray in 2022. However, it doesn't work, at least for me, within the context of the world of Pokemon itself. The world of Pokemon has always been portrayed as bright and cheerful in both the Anime and the video games, be it the main series or the spin-offs and side games. Including the game this movie is based on, Detective Pikachu (2016/2018). But like I said, it was a movie made in the mid to late 2010s and pretty much every movie was visually dark. Even ones that didn't need to be.

Overall this movie was a fun watch even though I had some problems with it. I don't regret watching it and I don't hate it. My problems with it are my problems, so if you don't find them to be problems that's okay. I also think that for me personally, as a video game movie, Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) works better. But that's because that movie didn't shy away from the fact that it's a movie based on a video game, while this movie kind of did. Detective Pikachu feels more like a Corporate Hollywood franchise film that happens to have Pokemon fans in the cast. Whereas Sonic feels like a movie the directors, producers, and writers wanted to make and put every care and effort into producing the movie, as we saw with the change from the original design they had for Sonic in the movie to the version we got in the final version of the movie. I do recommend watching Detective Pikachu though. It was a fun watch.

Alright folks that's going to be it for me for today. I have lots of posts coming your way this week. I'll have my review of the season 2 premiere of Only Murders in the Building out sometime tomorrow afternoon, after I've watched it, on Wednesday I'll be doing my Superman & Lois season 2 review, Thursday I'll be talking about the 1988 trade paperback collection The Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told, and then Friday will be my Star Trek: Strange New Worlds episode 9 review. So until then have a wonderful rest of your day and I will talk to you all later. Take care.