Here’s a relevant review of a product that’s meant to cash in on your nostalgia.

I bet, of all the things you expected me to write about, it would not be on the new Detective Pikachu movie. I would not blame you for being surprised. I would not have expected to be writing a review about it either. Detective Pikachu is the sort of movie wholly outside of my wheelhouse.

Well, I suppose that’s not entirely true. It is a video game adaptation. And I do play video games. I’ve even seen some of the other video game adaptation movies of years past. All of them have been stinkers.

So if you’re as good at pattern recognition as I am, then you can probably guess how well this movie turned out to be.

Course, as a movie review, it should go without saying that I’m going to be spoiling the movie in order to discuss it. But if you’re also trying to keep yourself from spoiling yourself on Detective Pikachu then… well… frankly I’m surprised that your interests overlap so much with mine for you to have arrived on this humble blog in the first place.

So, for the short version of my Detective Pikachu review: It’s scattered, terribly paced and poorly acted.

For my long version review: It’s baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad.

And we’re done here.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. There are several kinds of bad movies. With varying levels of emotional response from me. There are the bad movies that are so bad they’re good. My heart shall always belong to the hot hail of Flash Gordon and I will fight anyone who cannot comprehend its majesty.

This is not Flash Gordon bad, however.

Then there are the bad movies that are so boring and uninspired that I completely forget what happened the moment I emerge from the movie theatre. There the ones I can hardly be upset about, largely because they induce in my a temporary amnesia that blocks any recollection of what I’d seen. It’s like a nap but not nearly as restful. I’d give an example of these kinds of movies but I simply can’t recall any.

And Detective Pikachu isn’t that bad either.

There’s the insultingly awful. That type of movie that seeks to impart a personal grievance in its audience. The sort of movie that wraps itself up in some false pretension or manages to garner a suspiciously loud group of supporters and lulls you into the sense that it might be good – or at the very least, not bad.

But this wasn’t Gone Girl.

This was the Get Out of children’s movies. I expect Detective Pikachu to do well. It’s the sort of bad movie that drives a deep seated anger within me. It’s the bad movie with a large soul of promise that, through either studio meddling or directorial fumbling, completely squanders its potential on face-palming idiotic decisions that should never have cleared the writing workshop let alone survive the editing room.

And I’m surprised to see Detective Pikachu to land itself in this category of bad movie.

Full disclosure: I have never beaten a Pokemon game. I’ve played one, largely in Japanese, and am familiar enough with the franchise to follow its particular quirks and jingoisms. I did not grow up with Pokemon, missing the memetic phenomenon by the measure of two or so years. In terms of things that are popular, I respect it without having any interest in it. For me, Pokemon is pretty harmless. Sure, it butchers the idea of evolution but it is pretty nondescript in its existence and there are far worse things that have had just as much mass appeal.

I did not expect to like Detective Pikachu and thus I was taken by surprise when I actually found myself enjoying myself. Course, that was fleeting as joy turned to confusion pretty quickly. And once the confusion set it, it took hold with an iron grip that didn’t let go right up to the hilariously unoriginal Bill Nighy finale which was strangely contradictory with the few establishing scenes used for it but a mere forty minutes prior.

So, let’s spend some time about what went well. This should be short, because it was fleeting in the movie itself.

What caught me off-guard was how… unfocused Detective Pikachu was. It’s a movie that doesn’t seem like it knows itself. It waddles between a bone-headed children’s movie whose sole and blatant purpose is to push merchandising and nothing else and some strangely adult mystery thriller rooted in childhood nostalgia.

Obviously, I’m attracted to its latter leanings. But also, much like Captain America: Winter Soldier, this strange dip into a secondary genre left me realizing that I desperately want a Pokemon detective thriller. It works and it works really well when it embraces this direction. I’m reminded of the television show Fillmore!

Fillmore! is a children’s parody of the stock 1970s police drama. And it’s really clever in taking that genre’s tropes and exploring them through a juvenile lens. There’s a lot of cross-generational entertainment and humour that can be generated from this, demonstrated by Detective Pikachu’s interrogation scene with the Mr. Mime Pokemon. The movie also extremely excels in its realistic portrayal of Pokemon characters. Which first comes across as entirely creepy but is so ubiquitous and seamlessly integrated that I found I bought this aspect of the movie pretty quickly.

Couple this with an older protagonist and the decision to frame the narrative as a detective story, and I can’t help but feel this mature direction for the movie was deliberate. And, honestly, it was rather refreshing. I can’t think of many children’s movies that have a main character so old that they’re out of school and I give Detective Pikachu mad respects for doing so.

Thus, it’s a shame when the movie, also much like Winter Soldier, quickly drops its detective tropes and falls gleefully into mindless action and brain-dead spectacle. What starts off as a really promising story about a young man searching for his father quickly degenerates into power fantasy nonsense that’s so illogical, more than half the screen dialogue is the characters trying to explain everything going on because the premise is just that stupid.

There’s also the issue that the movie has so many visual nods to its game origins that it can’t help but stuff character dialogue with highlighting these nods. There’s an inelegance on display here that is stupefying. Movies are already pressed for time with character development and narrative progression that it leaves me wondering why you need characters to constantly inform the audience that “these are tortugas” and “this is a greninja” star especially when you just showed this stuff a second ago.

And then the movie decides it really wants to focus its plot around Mewtwo because surely the audience is going to be emotionally invested in this purple, weirdly cat shaped deus ex machina instead of focusing or strengthening the emotional plot of the protagonist and his relationship with his father and the world around him.

And that’s really when the movie goes off the rails.

Course, there’s a lot that’s bad with the movie beyond its empty plot. The acting is, quite frankly, embarrassing. The two leads are so flat and boring that I can’t even remember their names. I get that CGI flicks are difficult to act in, but it doesn’t excuse these two people for being so wooden amongst themselves. I believe the girl loves her duck more than she does the boy and her attempts to sell the otherwise embarrassingly juvenile dialogue only highlights how poorly the lines are written.

And, of course, the lead male’s performance left me reminiscing about Keanu Reeve’s portrayals in the Matrix. The Matrix worked around Keanu’s constant state of flummox by having his character legitimately confused with everything he encounter. Detective Pikachu is nowhere near as savvy and anytime an emotionally demanding scene arrives, we have a man (who I still can’t remember his name) staring vapidly either at his yellow rat or right into your soul.

And, let’s be honest here, Ryan Reynolds is reprising Deadpool here.

Simply put, I would not recommend Detective Pikachu unless you’re a diehard Pokemon fan (in which seeing all the Pokemon on screen with such a… surprisingly art style) will surely tickle your fancy. Or if you have kids. Because let’s be frank, if children can like Peppa Pig, they will literally like anything so long as its colourful.

Now, normally I would sign off here, but I want to present to you what would have been my ideal Detective Pikachu movie. Because, as I said, this movie is frustrating due to its surprising potential.

I think the movie should have committed entirely to its detective parody. Play up the secondary characters as greater pastiches. The reporter would make a terrific femme fatale, especially if you lean into her intern background being at odds with her killer journalistic instincts.

I also came to love this idea of having everyone with a Pokemon companion and there is no reason that more sight gags couldn’t be incorporated into the movie with these critters. A simple one would be having a young girl or refined lady come to claim the weird and gross tongue creature on the train. Even more, I would have liked the Mr. Mime – easily the best character of the movie – to have played a greater part. Make the Mr. Mime the companion of one primary antagonist and allow it to have additional opportunity to vex and frustrate the heroes.

Bonus points awarded if you gave the Mr. Mime burn scars after the interrogation with the protagonist.

Course, I think for the movie to really shine, it needs to drop the weird Mewtwo insertion. I don’t understand this need for grandiose plots and perhaps this is Hollywood trying to desperately cash in on the comicbook hero craze. But Detective Pikachu should have had a much narrower focus. It’s a little cliched but honestly, this movie would have benefited with the emotional struggles of an estranged son searching for his absent father.

As such, a more typical detective plot would work better as it would detract less from the father/son relationship. I’d personally suggest a story revolving around underworld match fixing of Pokemon battles. Because I both recognize that children want to see these creatures beat the living snot from each other and it further pulls at the nostalgia strings of the older generations. It allows easy insertion of action beats (an unfortunate necessity in this day and age) and can also be tied back to the protagonists childhood dreams of being a Pokemon trainer (thus allowing character development). I’d personally through in Pokemon Rights protestors as a cheeky way to poke fun at the fact that Pokemon is little more than glorified cock fighting but that’s just me.

With this setup, I’d give the primary underworld mob boss the Mr. Mime as his (or hers) Pokemon companion. And, of course, I’d have a chase scene with the Mr. Mime, pretty much go as one would expect after seeing the movie’s interrogation scene.

Also, price fixing is the sort of villainous action that requires but a fraction of an explanation compared to the purple mist of Detective Pikachu. For greater stakes, you could say the city’s mayor is indebted to the mob or whoever due to gambling debts if you wanted. And maybe have the villain trying to legalise underground Pokemon battles or something else if you really wanted.

Course, this would necessitate removing a talking Pikachu from the movie. But I say leave Ryan Reynolds to cheap romantic comedies and the Deadpool franchise.