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Pokémon Detective Pikachu

2019 • 104 minutes
4.3
102 reviews
68%
Tomatometer
PG
Rating
Eligible

About this movie

When an ace detective goes missing, his son teams up with a hilariously wise-cracking Pokémon - Detective Pikachu (Ryan Reynolds) - to help solve the mystery of what happened.
Rating
PG

Ratings and reviews

4.3
102 reviews
Matthew St Vincent
November 29, 2019
When I first heard about this film I was worried. When the two trailers dropped they gave me hope but after seeing the final film I was left feeling empty as if I spent money on nothing. The plot is simple… a Pikachu w/ amnesia teams up w/ his partner’s son (Tim) to find him. The cast includes Ryan Reynolds (Deadpool), Justice Smith (Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom), Kathryn Newton (Blockers) and Bill Nighy (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest). It was directed by Rob Letterman, who was also one of FOUR writers on the screenplay. Let’s start w/ some of the very few positives. The first/best thing this film has going for it is Ryan Reynolds and his quick wit, which has seen him typecast as the smart ass (typecasting started primarily w/ “Deadpool” and a couple films before but were one of the main causes in his casting here). Secondly; Justice Smith gave a decent/serviceable performance. Lastly the Pokémon designs look very good and surprisingly translate well over from standard animation to CGI life-like animation. Now the bad… and by god there’s a lot of bad. Firstly it has some of the most p**s poor writing for a big budget film in 2019. It is full of terrible exposition that ends up great if more plot holes than it set up to cover. There is a massive plot hole that’ll only become clear at the end but will infuriate a majority of people. Secondly; the remainder of the performance’s in the film are terrible. While Bill Nighy isn’t as guilty as others he gets the standard villain (not a spoiler, it’s common sense w/ his casting and a majority of people picked it up when he was announced in the film) I want to take over the world because I can (…I guess). What’s worse than the villains motivations is how the movie’s ignorance to the extreme unoriginality of this disgraceful attempt to have a villain w/out putting in the actual hard work of coming up w/ an original motivation. I was cringing, literally cringing during the final quarter of this film due to how much worse it got w/ campy (not so bad it’s good, just bad) acting and the writing. Oh my god… the writing in this is so terrible, it’s actually amateurish. The script seems to have been written by someone of a low IQ or someone who just got lazy knowing that it’s primary audience is kids so why put effort in. All up this is a really mediocre film that is not worth the time when there are plenty of better written family films. I know that a lot of people will sit back reading this review and say “it’s made for family’s, don’t be so harsh on it”. Nonetheless of it’s intentions it is a movie nonetheless and I shall review it as a movie. Final Rating: 5.2/10
6 people found this review helpful
Gabriel Kelly
August 28, 2019
This was an amazing movie, the advertisement was a shock it was off putting making the sweet pikachu into a mans voice, but after i watched the actual movie, its basically every pokemon fans dream coming true and they were mainly all the original pokemon characters which was so wonderful and nostalgic and the quirky snarky meme like sense of humor and battles were a blast especially the night club scene. I would definitely reccomend this movie to young and old and of course the coolest 90s kids
Vester&Friends
May 12, 2019
Since I'm a huge Pokemon fan, from my perspective, this was absolutely amazing! It was interesting seeing all the Pokemon with extremely high detail and highly structured personality. So many moments through the movie I almost cried, from the brilliant story line and mind blowing special effects! The music fitted very well with having exclusive new movie tracks and a couple of remastered songs from the anime and games. Seeing a real life Pokeball for the first time was really satisfying and gave me a real good first impression at the start of the movie. On downside, the only issue was there wasn't any proper trainer battles with throwing out Pokeballs and shouting attacks. Still would have been cool but not major enough to affect my rating. Overall, this movie was an absolute masterpiece! The best videogame movie I've ever seen! In fact it's now my favourite movie of all time! Gotta catch em all!
98 people found this review helpful