With a big franchise movie like Pokemon Detective Pikachu, I always feel like it’s important to disclose my familiarity with it so that you can decide if this is a review that would be worth reading for you. I would say that I’ve been a very mild fan of the Pokemon series over time. I definitely liked the series a lot more as a child. I played a lot of the older games, such as the first two generations of main games and some of the spin-offs like Pokemon Stadium or Pokemon Snap, but I haven’t played any of the newer ones (aside from Pokemon Go, but everyone played that). I had a few of the trading cards, but I was definitely more into Yu-Gi-Oh! in that respect. I also even watched some of the anime, although I wasn’t a huge fan of it. So, my love and knowledge of Pokemon mostly comes from my childhood and from Super Smash Bros. So, if you’re a diehard fan of Pokemon going into Detective Pikachu, then this review might not be for you. However, it also might not be for you if you’ve had no interest in the franchise before now. I can’t guarantee how much or how little people in those camps are going to like this movie, but I can give you the perspective of someone who has a base-level knowledge and appreciation for Pokemon.

Pokemon Detective Pikachu attempts to bring the Pokemon franchise to life in its first live-action movie by taking inspiration from the Detective Pikachu game and centering the story around, well…Pikachu as a detective. However, we mainly see this world through the eyes of our human character, Tim Goodman. The basic premise of the movie sees Tim and Pikachu teaming up to solve the mystery of Tim’s father’s disappearance. It’s a good enough premise, and one that works well to bring the Pokemon franchise to life. I thought it would be a mistake to go for a straight-up adaptation of the anime, so I think this was a good starting point for getting people interested.

My main opinion on Pokemon Detective Pikachu is that it’s “a great Pokemon movie, but not a great movie.” This means that there’s a positive correlation between how much someone enjoys Pokemon and how much I’ll recommend the movie to them. If you’re a diehard Pokemon fan, I think you’ll enjoy the movie more than I did. On the flip side, if you don’t care about Pokemon, I don’t think this movie will win you over. It’s a lot more of a kid’s movie than I was expecting, and it’s also geared towards fans a lot more than I was expecting. Neither of these things are bad, but it does make it a harder sell for me to just anyone. The actual story and characters of the movie were fine, but they definitely didn’t blow me away.

With that being said, I think the best part about the movie easily are its Pokemon elements. This is exactly how I’d imagine the world to look if Pokemon were real, and so I think it’s really impressive how the filmmakers were able to bring it to life. I found myself enjoying the movie most when I was just seeing the random Pokemon walk/fly around, and whenever we encountered a new major one I got excited. The Pokemon themselves are the definite stars of the show here, and so I think this aspect of the movie is really well-done. It’s just some of the stuff that surrounds it that’s less impressive.

I think I set my expectations for this a little high, but in the end I did still enjoy it a decent bit. I thought that Ryan Reynolds was really fun as Pikachu, and while his human partner might not have been quite as interesting, Pikachu himself is really fun to follow throughout the movie. I don’t think this is a must-see or anything, but I definitely think that it was an impressive effort for bringing the Pokemon franchise to life. I wouldn’t be upset if they didn’t make more of these, but I also liked it enough that I’d be down for more.

3.5/5