Pokemon Detective Pikachu had potential as a concept, but sadly it was poorly executed in my opinion. There's alot of Pokemon nostalgia and fan-service
franchise references in there for sure, but the story itself is very weak. You can see where things are heading straight away and it felt very dumbed down for
kids rather than aiming for both kids and adults. I was really shocked at how bad the acting was in this movie. It really distracted me from taking the Human characters seriously, and they were easily the worst part of the movie. There are scenes in the movie which try to pull off emotion but it falls flat. There is a very small part of the Pokemon game stuff in there like catching Pokemon and battling them, but it's mostly filler rather than being relevant to the plot.
Detective Pikachu himself fairs a little better, but his quips and little jokey comments get a bit tiring after a while. I wasn't even the biggest fan of the CGI Pokemon honestly, as they just look weird and kind of creepy rather than cute. They should have just gone for the Who Framed Roger Rabbit approach and made them Cartoon animated instead of realistic. Plot contrivances and weird things happening for no logical reason, as well as scenes which were surprisingly boring. I kind of liked the idea of Pokemon and Humans living together, and the small snippets we see of them do jobs for people and other tasks in the background is a nice touch, but that only really appears in the first half of the movie and then it just becomes bland and generic. The showdown near the end has some okay action to it, but to me it just felt like this should have been much, much better than what we ended up with in terms of twists and turns.
As a big Pokemon fan, I was disappointed with this movie. I felt it should have been structured better in the story and making it more interesting rather than focusing on showing off the Pokemon stuff and references. They needed to make the Human characters more entertaining rather than just the Pokemon themselves. Seeing my favourite Pokemon in CGI Live Action and noticing a reference to the games isn't enough for me. This is a sloppy, executed movie that could have been so much more and seems to coast on nostalgia and callbacks. I have no idea how someone who never cared for Pokemon could get into this, but if you're a Pokemon fan I'd say it's probably worth at least one watch. As for me, I'm still hoping for a genuinely good Video Game movie that will break the curse, but Detective Pikachu isn't the answer to that sadly.
4/10
Detective Pikachu himself fairs a little better, but his quips and little jokey comments get a bit tiring after a while. I wasn't even the biggest fan of the CGI Pokemon honestly, as they just look weird and kind of creepy rather than cute. They should have just gone for the Who Framed Roger Rabbit approach and made them Cartoon animated instead of realistic. Plot contrivances and weird things happening for no logical reason, as well as scenes which were surprisingly boring. I kind of liked the idea of Pokemon and Humans living together, and the small snippets we see of them do jobs for people and other tasks in the background is a nice touch, but that only really appears in the first half of the movie and then it just becomes bland and generic. The showdown near the end has some okay action to it, but to me it just felt like this should have been much, much better than what we ended up with in terms of twists and turns.
As a big Pokemon fan, I was disappointed with this movie. I felt it should have been structured better in the story and making it more interesting rather than focusing on showing off the Pokemon stuff and references. They needed to make the Human characters more entertaining rather than just the Pokemon themselves. Seeing my favourite Pokemon in CGI Live Action and noticing a reference to the games isn't enough for me. This is a sloppy, executed movie that could have been so much more and seems to coast on nostalgia and callbacks. I have no idea how someone who never cared for Pokemon could get into this, but if you're a Pokemon fan I'd say it's probably worth at least one watch. As for me, I'm still hoping for a genuinely good Video Game movie that will break the curse, but Detective Pikachu isn't the answer to that sadly.
4/10