Det Pikachu’s first (and last) case
Print Edition
IT’S got an adorable hero from an iconic media brand who is voiced by a proven box office master at snark. But, somehow, “Pokémon Detective Pikachu” never really gets arresting.
A neutered Ryan Reynolds tries hard but can’t make this live action-meets-animated movie gel. It’s plodding and listless and really not funny or smart enough.
“Pokémon Detective Pikachu” borrows lightly from film noir crime dramas to create a mystery in a world where humans and Pokémon co-exist. A young man called Tim Goodman (the terrific Justice Smith) joins with Pikachu (Reynolds’ voice) to search for Tim’s father, a missing detective.
Smith is very appealing as a son coming to grips with the loss of his estranged father, but Reynolds, as a cute coffee-guzzling detective with a Sherlock Holmes’ deerstalker cap, ping-pongs from heartfelt to caustic uneasily and tries to mimic his best-known, fourth-wall breaking “Deadpool” movie character (“That’s a twist. Very twisty,” he says of one plot point.)
The film starts slowly, builds to a sort of plateau and then ends with the final third consisting of nonstop action sequences and an underwhelming conclusion. Ken Watanabe is underused as a police chief.
Speaking of speaking, you’re probably wondering why there’s any dialogue between the adorable pocket monsters and humans since Pokémon traditionally only just say their own names. Enter five screenwriters — Rob Letterman, Dan Hernandez, Benji Samit, Derek Connolly and Nicole Perlman. Their solution is a gas that makes everyone crazy but somehow allows Tim to communicate with Pikachu. Sure, gas.
The pair are joined by a junior reporter — really an unpaid intern tasked with writing listicles, played by a winning Kathryn Newton — who helps them get to the bottom of the mystery using shoe leather and guile. (This is a film that celebrates the media in a big way — there are newspaper clippings, honorable TV reporting and a respected giant cable network. “It’s not news if it can’t be verified,” says one character. Take that, fake news people.)
It’s a film that explores daddy issues and also riffs off “Silence of the Lambs” (“Are you gonna make me into a lampshade?” Pikachu asks his human minder). Some of it is very scary for younger kids; most of it is incomprehensible to adults.
This just feels like a venal money grab from a mega corp. You’ve played Pokémon Go, right?
Call this one “Pokémon Don’t Go.”
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