Pokemon Detective Pikachu

Walking into Pokémon Detective Pikachu, there’s an established mythology. It’s not an origin-of-the-Pokémon movie. It’s a, “If you don’t know anything about Pokémon, none of this is going to make a lick of sense” movie. Ryan Reynolds voices the title character, so that could be fun, right? It’s fun for about the first 15 minutes that Reynolds spends on the screen as the little yellow furball with a Sherlock Holmes hat. Then, Reynolds and the rest of them get lost in a haze of sloppy action and convoluted plotlines. No doubt, they got some good performers to participate in this moneymaker. Along with Reynolds, you get Bill Nighy as the creator of the Pokémon world, or something like that. (Still not sure what he really did.) Justice Smith plays Tim, the main protagonist, a young adult who has lost his father and befriends Pikachu. And then there’s the very talented Kathryn Newton, under-used as TV reporter wannabe Lucy Stevens. Heck, even Ken Watanabe shows up in this mess, doing pretty much what he did in Godzilla (looking up to the sky in awe). By the time this thing wrapped, I honestly had no idea what had really happened, nor did I really care. The movie didn’t pique my interest in the Pokémon enterprise. It solidified my indifference. Let’s just say I’m not going to be downloading any of that shit to my phone.