Pokémon Detective Pikachu review – Ryan Reynolds grabs film by scruff of the neck
The inspired casting of the Deadpool actor transforms this from an average Pokémon movie into fun family fare
Detective Pikachu is undoubtedly the best movie ever made… about Pokémon. Nobody who sat through 1998’s awful Pokémon: The First Movie, any subsequent Pokémon films or the more than 1,000 TV episodes, could argue that quality entertainment has been a priority of the children’s monster franchise. But following the colossal success of its Pokémon Go game, the Japanese brand has undergone an expensive Hollywood makeover, and if the results are not exactly groundbreaking, they’ve at least caught the attention of the wider world, mainly thanks to the inspired casting of Ryan Reynolds as Pikachu. Without Reynolds this would be pretty run-of-the-mill; with him it’s a perfectly acceptable family movie. Given the history, that’s a giant leap for Pokémon-kind.
Detective Pikachu’s template is clearly Robert Zemeckis’s classic Who Framed Roger Rabbit? – both in its junior film-noir plot and its mix of live-action humans and animated fantasy creatures. The setting is Ryme City, a metropolis where humans and Pokémon live side-by-side, although they cannot understand each others’ languages. For the uninitiated, Pikachu is a furry little yellow creature, capable of delivering powerful electric shocks when his cuteness is called into question. In previous incarnations, Pikachu was a loyal pet who could only say his own name (“Pika Pika!”); now he’s a wisecracking urbanite with a deerstalker hat and a caffeine addiction. Reynolds brings the same comic energy and timing to the role as he did with Deadpool.