‘Pokémon Detective Pikachu’ review: A surprise comedy caper

‘Pokémon Detective Pikachu  While Sonic the Hedgehog fans fumed over the film treatment of their spiny pal — prompting director Jeff Fowler to redo Sonic’s toothsome look for his upcoming movie — Pokémon enthusiasts will adore the titular yellow cutie of “Pokémon Detective Pikachu.”

He’s fuzzy with rosy cheeks, a lighting bolt-shaped tail and … a deeply sarcastic, wisecracking voice? Yes, the tiny, electrically charged chipmunk-mouse-banana hybrid is voiced by Ryan Reynolds. Although the actor doesn’t drop F-bombs like he did in “Deadpool,” Reynolds lends the furball the superhero’s same world-weary city talk. It sure ain’t typecasting, but it works tremendously well.

So does most of this weird movie, especially for fans. If you know every Pokémon from Bulbasaur to Mewtwo, traded the cards, played the Game Boy cartridges, watched the animated TV show and know every word to its earworm of a theme song, you’ll be pleased as an adult to find that this film is a much less costly and time-consuming investment.

My family could be living on a superyacht off Monaco today had I found a cheaper hobby as a kid, like high-stakes blackjack.

“Detective Pikachu,” however, is worth the ticket price, and it’s more mature than its youthful source material would suggest. It’s even set in motion by a death!

The dead dude is Harry, a police detective who righted wrongs in Ryme City, a first-of-its-kind metropolis in which humans and Pokémon can co-exist peacefully. There the cuddly creatures work jobs and cannot legally be put in dangerous Pokémon battles.

(For non-fans: Pokémon are hundreds of fictional animals, created in Japan, that have special skills, such as psychic or electroshock powers.)

Harry’s estranged son, Tim (Justice Smith), is languishing in the suburbs as an insurance appraiser when he hears the news. Tim heads out to the city, and up to his dad’s film noir-like apartment, where he meets Pikachu, his pop’s adorable former police partner. Pikachu inconveniently has amnesia, and is trying to put the pieces of his past back together. Still, he has a hunch Harry is alive.

The pair endeavors to solve the mystery of what happened, with the help of Kathryn Newton’s Lucy, an unpaid intern journalist (see: millennials).

Being obvious nostalgia bait for children of the ’90s, director Rob Letterman’s film has no right to be as good or well-crafted as it is. The plot takes major twists that come as legitimate surprises, and seeing those old cartoon characters plopped into our world rendered in CGI is enormously satisfying. I only wish we could experience more of Ryme City and the Pokémons’ lives in it. Some of the Pokémon look real; Pikachus, you would think, would be more popular in Manhattan than French bulldogs.

Similarly endearing is 23-year-old Smith in his biggest role so far. The actor has a dry, Everyman persona as a guy scraping by at a job he hates (see: millennials), and you root for him as he pursues his childhood dream of becoming a Pokémon trainer. He’s the very capable straight man to Reynolds’ puffy jokester.

Who would have thought that one of the most enjoyable buddy-cop movies of 2019 would star a Pokémon?