tek's rating: ¼

Pokémon Detective Pikachu (PG; live-action/CGI)
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This movie is based on a game I haven't played, though I kind of think of it as a sequel to the original pokemon game, because at one point in the movie I think it was mentioned that Mewtwo (supposedly the most powerful pokemon in the world) had escaped from a lab in Kanto years ago. Anyway, I should mention that I wasn't entirely sure if "Pokemon" should be included in the actual title or not, but most sites do include it, so I do too. Oh, and also I wanted to say that in some of the bonus features on the DVD, several people mention the movie being sort of a film noir, so I'm including a link to my review there as well as in video game movies.

The movie begins with Mewtwo once again escaping from a lab, this time in Ryme City (I have no idea which region that's in). It chases a car that's driving away from the facility, and apparently causes the car to crash.

In the next scene, we meet a young man named Tim Goodman (Justice Smith), who wanted to be a pokemon trainer when he was a kid, but has long since given up on that dream. However, his friend Jack (Karan Soni) tries to convince him to catch a Cubone. That doesn't go so well. Later, Tim finds that he has missed several calls from police lieutenant Hideo Yoshida (Ken Watanabe), who informs him of the car crash we saw earlier, because the driver had been Tim's estranged father, a detective named Harry. So, Tim travels to Ryme City to put Harry's affairs in order, or whatever. In Harry's apartment, he finds a vial of a strange gas that turns pokemon belligerent. He also finds a Pikachu (voiced by Ryan Reynolds) that has amnesia, and apparently a side effect of the gas was giving Tim the ability to understand what Pikachu is saying (though he still can't understand any other pokemon). Pikachu believes he knew Harry, and is a detective himself, and that Harry is still alive. Tim is skeptical, but the two of them soon team up to try to find Harry, as well as restore Pikachu's memory.

They're later joined in this investigation by an intern reporter named Lucy Stevens, who is accompanied by a Psyduck. (I should mention that in Ryme City, most if not all people have a pokemon companion, though both pokeballs and pokemon battles are illegal there. And a lot of the city's pokemon seem to be independent of any humans.) Ryme City had been founded by an industrialist named Howard Clifford (Bill Nighy) as a place for humans and pokemon to live together as equals. However, his company is now run by his son, Roger, who also owns a news network called CMN (where Lucy works in the social media department). It seems as if Roger may have been responsible for capturing and experiment on Mewtwo, among other pokemon, and the production of the gas Tim found earlier, which is called "R". However, there are other possibilities, so I won't spoil whether Roger is actually guilty or not.

Um... and I don't really know what else to say. A lot of stuff happens throughout the movie as Tim, Pikachu, and Lucy search for the truth. I do want to say that there are lots of CGI pokemon seen in the movie, from various generations of the games, including some I'm not currently familiar with. Of course, Detective Pikachu and his friends eventually solve the case and stop a nefarious plot the nature of which I won't divulge. I'm not sure everything in the movie made sense (one thing in particular confuses me), but it was still a pretty fun movie, and I found the conclusion satisfying.


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