Pokemon: Detective Pikachu, directed by Rob Letterman. Written by Dan Hernandez et al. Starring Ryan Reynolds, Justice Smith, and Kathryn Newton. Legendary Entertainment, The Pokemon Company, and Warner Brothers Entertainment, 2019. 1 hour and 44 minutes. Rated PG.
If I may say so, I think I’m in a good position to review this particular movie: I happen to be something of a weeb, but I also happen to be largely unfamiliar with the Pokémon franchise simply because (with notable exceptions) I gravitate away from the the never-ending mega-cash cows in favor of smaller, more self-contained, more indie stuff. I have nothing against Pokémon; I just don’t know it. So today I intend to address the question, “How accessible is Detective Pikachu to the outsider?”
The answer is, surprisingly … pretty darn accessible.
Oh, sure, there are some concepts that could have been better fleshed out. The notion of “Pokémon evolution” is mentioned and even becomes central to the plot without adequate explanation. (Knowing that this is based on a franchise of video games, I could infer that evolving means “leveling up,” but other viewers might be lost.) The film also acts as if I’m supposed to know who the hell Mewtwo is. But aside from that—and these are ultimately minor—I could pretty much understand what was going on.
Detective Pikachu was originally a video game, and it is an unusual, quirky, stand-out title in the Pokémon canon, featuring as it does a mystery-themed story and a Pikachu who can talk. That makes it a decidedly odd choice for the first-ever big-budget Hollywood Pokémon movie. It would make more sense to start this movie franchise by introducing us to Ash, or a character like him—a bright-eyed young boy who wants to capture and train Pocket Monsters, and who does battle with Team Rocket or similar villains. We might expect the first-ever live-action Pokémon film to be a sports story, or maybe a Pokémon version of How to Train Your Dragon. Instead, Detective Pikachu drops us into the middle of the Pokémon universe and introduces us to a protagonist who’s jaded with Pokémon training and an antagonist who questions its very morality. That’s a bold move for a franchise’s first entry into a new medium.
It mostly works—except when it doesn’t. The film opens with one brief scene in which our hero, Tim Goodman (played gamely if unevenly by an anemic-looking Justice Smith), and a childhood friend we never see again make an ill-fated attempt at capturing a Pokémon with a Pokéball. A little later, an infodump delivered as a snippet from a television documentary introduces us to the concept of Pokémon battles—and that’s all we get as far as world-building goes. After that, the movie lets you sink or swim on your own.
If you’re comfortable with genre movies, you’ll probably swim, as many of the blanks are easy to fill in for someone familiar with fantasy or science fiction generally. It’s clear from the film’s mixed reviews, however, that a lot of critics are sinking: The movie has barely managed to eke out a “fresh” rating on the Tomatometer, and when we look over the comments from the negative reviews, we get the impression that the critics who hate it do so simply because they don’t “get” it. The movie has a straightforward story line, but they’re calling it incomprehensible.
The Premise
As the story goes, Tim Goodman is estranged from his father, Harry Goodman (Paul Kitson), and has also given up his childhood dream in favor of a dead-end job. His daddy issues began after Tim’s mother died and his father threw himself into his work as a detective. Tim hasn’t seen his father for many years since Harry moved to Rime City, a metropolis created by an ambitious entrepreneur (Bill Nighy), who has made Pokémon battles illegal within the city’s boundaries. In Rime City, humans work alongside Pokémon instead of capturing and training them, and every human is expected to have a “Pokémon partner,” basically his own personal mascot character.
Tim travels to Rime City after receiving news that his father died during his most recent investigation. There, he soon encounters a Pikachu—the little yellow guy with electric powers—who has an unusual ability to talk like a human (voiced by Ryan Reynolds, reprising his shtick from Deadpool). The Pikachu has lost his memory, but is nonetheless convinced that Harry is still alive, so Tim and Pikachu go on a mission to find him.
The Quality
The special effects are pretty good overall. Rime City, especially in its wide shots full of large crowds of humans and Pokémon working and playing together, are amazing (and I am told they contain a lot of Easter eggs, but I couldn’t recognize them). There are a few hiccups, such as a clunkily animated moment in which Pikachu jumps from a table, or a scene in which Tim finds himself surrounded by a herd of Bulbasaurs that are obviously not occupying the same space he is. But aside from those few moments, the Pokémon look remarkably good. The CGI finds a balance between realism and cartoonishness, making the monsters realistic enough that they appear to be interacting with the actors, but still goofy and fake-looking enough to be cute rather than creepy.
The acting, by contrast, is uneven. Smith holds his own, and he manages to look convincingly as if he’s actually interacting with the Pokémon, but he isn’t going to win any Oscars for this. The other humans are largely forgettable except for Kathryn Newton, who plays Tim’s perfunctory love interest Lucy; her performance is memorable mostly for being so damn bad, though she admittedly doesn’t have much material to work with.
Perhaps the boldest choice in the film’s creation was the decision to avoid outright zaniness. The eye-assaulting colors or manic editing of, say, the Speed Racer movie, are not to be found here. It’s a bright world but subdued enough to look halfway real, and in some cases taking on a gritty or noir-ish tone to remind us that it’s a detective story. The film also builds at a steady pace, largely eschewing big action set pieces until the second half. Without a lot of action, it’s mostly Ryan Reynolds’s snark and his buddy-cop interaction with Smith that have to carry the film. But Reynolds is mostly up to the task.
It is not a perfect movie by any means, but it is likable, and it’s even gutsy in some respects. It’s not a work of sublime genius, but it’s a fine popcorn-muncher, and it’s easily one of the best video game movies ever made—though that’s an admittedly low bar to clear.
Also notable, I believe this is the first Hollywood film based on a Nintendo franchise since the infamous Super Mario Brothers.
The Issues
The film is a buddy-cop comedy-drama that falls more-or-less in the same genre as Who Framed Roger Rabbit: It proposes an alternate universe in which humans and kooky cartoon characters live alongside one another, and then it introduces a film noir-inspired mystery that partly hinges on the friction between those two species. Also, like its predecessor, Detective Pikachu shoves all potential for social commentary into the background, preferring to play it safe.
I have mixed opinions about that. The novel that inspired Who Framed Roger Rabbit contains (I am told) a lot of social commentary; the movie’s decision to background all of that certainly kept the film from being preachy, but also resulted in lost opportunities for world-building. There’s interesting stuff going on behind the scenes, cartoon characters relegated to a ghetto and being falsely accused of crimes on an apparently regular basis, but most of that gets only a bare mention. Detective Pikachu is similar: The illegality of Pokémon battles in Rime City gets a mention, but little follow-up.
For example, when Tim first travels there, he meets a police chief (Ken Watanabe, Hollywood’s favorite token Japanese guy), who mentions Tim’s former, now-abandoned dream of being a Pokémon trainer. Does the chief curl his lip in disgust at such a barbaric ambition? Or does he look a little excited because he likes Pokémon training too but dare not say so in public?
No, he does neither. He just looks as if he’s bored and wants to be anywhere other than in this movie, which is typical of Watanabe whenever he’s in a big-budget American film.
I’m not saying I wish the movie had sermonized. I’m not at all interested in seeing cutesy, fighting Pocket Monsters telling me to check my privilege. But an exploration of the implications of the Pokémon universe itself, as itself, could have made for some good speculative fiction writing, which the movie chose to stay away from.
The Fun-Hating Prigs
There may be a reason for this: over-reading the morality of Pokémon is already an art form that’s been done to death. For a fine example of it, I recommend this unintentionally hilarious essay by Richard Whittall. Here’s my favorite quote:
The hardest thing to accept however is my own son’s moral equivocation when I raise the subject of Pokémon oppression. (Though, admittedly, not a small part of me feels content that he would make a great corporate lawyer.) He calmly reminds me that these Pokémon were lost without Ash, that they appreciate ‘the training,’ and that they too revel in Ash’s victories – even though I point out that trainers, not Pokémon, earn badges for victory.
Yes, he actually says “Pokémon oppression” like it’s a serious real-world issue. And I’m guessing the reason his son “equivocates” is because he’s not quite old enough yet to reply with, “Eff off, old man.”
As stated above, I am interested in the ethics of an alternate universe with a global culture entirely based on a glorified form of cock-fighting, but I think those ethical questions should be kept in their own universe, not hamfistedly applied to this one. At least in the civilized world, dog-fighting and cock-fighting are not activities to which most people are seriously tempted, either to actually do or to fantasize about, which is why it was such a shock a few years back when a major football player was caught training fighting dogs. For that reason, I think Pókemon is probably mostly harmless as it’s unlikely to lead anyone into anything except wasting too much time or buying too many video games. I am, however, willing to hear serious arguments to the contrary (as long as they don’t include the phrase “Pokémon oppression” because, I mean, come on).
The Significance
Although I am not one of those fellows who flies into a rage whenever American filmmakers cast Americans to play parts in movies based on foreign franchises, I will say that I do almost wish this weren’t an American film. In a way, Pokémon is a very Japanese kind of thing: Specifically, it draws on the Japanese love for mascot characters. Nonetheless, in spite of having been created in the U.S. and U.K., it manages to convey some of that love and even make it infectious. While watching the film and seeing all these people with their doofy Pokémon partners, I found myself muttering, “I wish I had a Pokémon”—and given that this is a huge, money-hungry franchise, infecting viewers with the desire to “catch” a Pocket Monster may have been the entire point, so the film is in that sense a smashing success.
I am extremely fond of stories that portray humans living and working alongside non-humans, especially of the cartoonish variety, so there’s no question but that Detective Pikachu was designed to be exactly the kind of movie I enjoy, and I am now eager to see the next installment in the live-action Pokémon saga. C. S. Lewis once meditated on this human desire to meet and talk with the non-human, which he saw both in science fiction stories and in people’s fondness for pets. He concluded that this was fundamentally a spiritual desire, that it was a reflection of the desire for God.
Detective Pikachu captures this well in one of its hokiest moments. Pikachu tells Tim that, although humans and Pokémon cannot ordinarily understand one another’s speech, they can meet on an emotional level, that when Pokémon and humans bond, Pokémon can read humans’ feelings—perhaps similar to the way dogs and horses do.
For this reason, I am inclined to dismiss the accusation that Pokémon encourages animal cruelty. The “battles” exist to move the gameplay in the video games or carry the plot in the cartoon, but I don’t think they’re really the ultimate point: The point is that people can meet others different from themselves and be friends. In other words, it actually encourages social harmony, kindness to animals, and maybe even the quest for the divine.
That’s an aspect of the franchise that Detective Pikachu is particularly good at conveying, so I recommend it.
… Okay, but seriously, who the hell is Mewtwo?
Pokémon: Detective Pikachu
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