Warm and fuzzy
IN Japan, the Pocket Monsters or Pokemon series of video games has been a big phenomenon since its creation in 1995, which has since spawned quite a number of anime andmangaaswell. Big in the 1990s around the world, Pokemon recently had a resurgence of interest once more in 2016 after the mobile game Pokemon Go became a mainstream craze. This has eventually led to the first ever live-action adaptation of the successful franchise via a collaboration between Hollywood and Japan.
It’s one of the very few movies from a video game origin that actually doesn’t suck onscreen, even with the outlandish premise.
Pokemon: Detective Pikachu is set in contemporary times, specifically in Ryme City, where fictional creatures known as
Pokemon, each with its own specific individual talents, co-exist with the human population.
Humans known as Pokemon Trainers used to catch and train the creatures to battle each other for sport. But due to a disabled visionary billionaire industrialist, Howard Clifford (Bill Nighy), people have learnt to live with the Pokemon more like domesticated pets or companions that are also useful members of society.
The story focuses on Tim Goodman (Justice Smith), a young man living with his grandmother who soon gets news that his estranged veteran police detective father, Harry, is presumed to be dead after a mysterious car crash.
Tim, whose mother had died while he was just a boy, travels to Ryme City to meet up with his father’s friend, Detective Hideo Yoshida (Ken Watanabe), to get the keys to his father’s apartment. While he is at the apartment he has a strange encounter with the famous yellow Pokemon named Pikachu wearing a detective’s hat.
The amnesiac creature is Harry’s Pokemon and both Tim and Pikachu can interestingly communicate with each other by regular speech. When the two escape an attack by a usually harmless bunch of Pokemon creatures that seemed to have turned aggressive, via a mysterious gas accidentally released from a vial by Tim in his father’s apartment, the two set out to find out the truth about Harry.
Along the way Tim stumbles upon Lucy Stevens (Kathryn Newton), a junior reporter accompanied by a hilarious Psyduck, who works for the media corporation owned by Roger Clifford (Chris Geere), the seemingly ambitious son of Howard.
It seems that there’s a lot of hanky panky going on at the powerful Clifford Enterprises as there are labs doing experiments on the Pokemon creatures for nefarious purposes.
Will Tim and Pikachu survive long enough to uncover the truth about everything and overcome the unseen dangers that await them?
This movie, directed by Rob Letterman (of Shark Tale, Monsters vs Aliens and Goosebumps fame), belongs to Ryan Reynolds who voiced Pikachu and provided the creature’s facial expressions through motion capture. The CGI work and design helped as well in rendering Pikachu as a cute and irresistible character just like what is seen in the video games and other media.
But it is Reynolds’ volley of jokes, snark and emotions all delivered with seemingly natural ease (think a PG version of Dead Pool, which Reynolds also played to utter perfection under a mask), that the character is at once entertaining, heartwarming and interesting.
English singer and actress Rita Ora, who composed and sang the catchy tune Carry On with Norwegian DJ Kygo for the movie’s soundtrack, also has a small role as a scientist here.
The varied cast members as a whole give decent performances given the script which serves as a basic family friendly outing mainly for kids and fans of the brand. It’s not the same as the latest Transformers outing, Bumblebee, but has a similar warm and fuzzy underlying vibe to it.
There are lots of Pokemon characters that make appearances throughout the movie and fans will be able to further appreciate the Easter eggs and various cues and nuances laid out in various scenes.
Bottom line, Pokemon: Detective Pikachu is not a perfect film but a fun and watchable affair with a few twists and turns along the way, as well as some interesting imagery for a breezy and fun day out at the cinema.