Detective Pikachu is a triumph of low expectations. It succeeds at dragging the world of Pokémon into the world of live-action and laying the foundations for a new “universe” of follow-up films with aesthetic continuity. Much like Rogue One showed that Star Wars movies do not always have to be about space wizards, Detective Pikachu tells a delightful little story that leans just the right amount on the nostalgia of the games without battles or trainers. Wife says, the movie “dodges a problem with the premise with the games, which is that a child drops out of a school to learn how to fight with animals.”
Friend made the point that DP is essentially a mash-up of Batman Begins and Get Out, which I think is kind of a brilliant formation. To that I’ll add that anyone who has seen the movie Zootopia would be pretty underwhelmed by DP if it weren’t for the fact that there are fucking Pokémon galore in this movie. There are a shocking number of twists in a movie that seems like it couldn’t be that complex. Ditto, my favorite Pokémon, is featured. Everyone does a pretty good job acting, including Suki Waterhouse (who is once again hilariously underutilized), except for Blockers‘s Kathryn Newton who doesn’t seem to be able to decide if she’s in a noir or a parody of a noir. One might say that’s true of the movie writ large, but everyone else seems to settle on a single tone of delivery. There are indeed sexy Pokémon, which is what most of us were wondering when we walked into this movie.
Spoilers: If there are any critiques (and they are few and petty), the film as a whole suffers from Eragon syndrome–a lot of voiceovers and awkward cuts from Pikachu at knee level to close up shots of human faces reacting. Bill Nighy’s character is very obviously a self-hating disabled person trope. The entire plot of both this eccentric city and the Evil Plan is at times recycled and outlandish: involves catching (a lab-produced clone??) Mewtwo as step one. But probably the thing that bothers me most is a minor detail in the protagonist’s bedroom.
In what world is the title fight between a legendary bird (which apparently has been caught?) and a… Steelix? Why would anyone go to that event except to watch Articuno mop the floor with one of the first Pokémon you clear out of your PC when you run out of room? I was so confused by it that it was genuinely hard to focus on what’s going on in the scene. If anyone has any good ideas let me know.
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