The Adventure of The Silent Partner

I wanna be the very best 

Like no one ever was 

To catch them is my real test

To train them is my cause

Pokémon Theme (Jason Paige)

Sooo, was the biggest detective-themed Hollywood movie of this year for the west?

Tim Goodman is a young insurance agent who one day is informed his father, private detective Harry Goodman, passed away in a traffic incident. Tim had an estranged relationship with his father, but he travels to Ryme City to take care of the necessary formalities. Even in a world where Pokémon live, Ryme City can be called a unique metropolis. There are about 700 different species of Pokémon (Pocket Monsters), each with their own special powers and characteristics. People use them for a variety of activities, from pets to using them for Pokémon fights and having them help with work. In Ryme City however, humans and Pokémon live peacefully side-by-side and Pokémon trainer battles are even forbidden. An enormous surprise awaits Tim in Harry's apartment in Ryme City however: not only does he find his father's partner Pikachu (who was first presumed to have also died in the same accident) roaming around in the room, Tim can actually understand what this Pikachu is saying! The electric yellow mouse-type Pokémon is suffering from amnesia and can't remember much, but he tells Tim that he believes Harry is still alive out there, given that he survived the accident too. He is convinced the incident had to do with a case Harry was investigating, involving a mysterious gas container still left in Harry's office. Tim is the only human who can understand Pikachu, which makes Pikachu believe this is destiny and that they have to work together to find Harry. Tim is at first very reluctant to help Pikachu, but then they start uncovering a large conspiracy involving Pokémon experiments in the 2019 live-action movie Pokémon Detective Pikachu.

Given that Nintendo's famous Pokémon franchise is not 'just' a videogame series, but a worldwide cultural phenomenom that has lasted for some decades, I doubt I have to explain that much about Pokémon, and long-time readers of this blog will also be familiar with the title Detective Pikachu: it was a spin-off mystery adventure game released in 2018 for the Nintendo 3DS which I enjoyed a lot. The game may have been geared towards a younger audience, but it was fun, and actually did interesting things with combining the concept of Pokémon (creatures with unique powers) with puzzles and a mystery plot. The movie Pokémon Detective Pikachu, incidentally also the very first live-action movie based on the franchise, is based on this specific videogame, though you have to note that is not a 1:1 adaptation. The basic story of Tim and a wise-cracking Pikachu teaming up to uncover Harry's fate while investigating his last case is of course the same and there are scenes in the movie that will remind you of specific events/places of the game, but the game is quite a bit longer with far more locales/sub-storylines and in fact, the story of the videogame will continue in an upcoming sequel, while the movie is a standalone story that wraps up everything at the end.

For the mystery fans, I'd definitely recommend the game over the movie though. Pokémon Detective Pikachu is obviously aimed at a younger audience and it's fairly enjoyable as an adventure movie (though I still think photo-realistic CG Pokémon are creepy). Ryan Reynolds seems to have a blast voicing the supercute Pikachu and if anything, the interrogation scene with Mr. Mime (a mime Pokémon) is hilarious and a must-see. But as a mystery movie, it is quite lacking, especially considering the source material had plenty of great moments to offer. There' is barely any problem solving in this movie, no carefully thought-out clewing or meaningful foreshadowing. It's a buddy movie with a very straight path: Tim and Pikachu first find a clue in Harry's office, which leads them to location A, there they get a clue to location B, etc. And there's some really lazy fill-in-the-gaps moments where characters start to explain everything out of nowhere or the heroes stumble upon conveniently significant clues or locations, so the core mystery plot never feels rewarding, as there's never any proper build-up and clewing. One could just say, 'it's a kids movie', but so are the Detective Conan movies and most of them are proper mystery movies. And as I said, the source material (the Detective Pikachu videogame) does work as a mystery adventure game, despite being designed for kids too.

One element which made the Detective Pikachu game satisfying as a mystery game, was that it really incorporated the various Pokémon and their powers in the plot. The game was divided in chapters, in which Tim and Pikachu had to solve smaller mysteries/happenings during their investigation, for example 'accidents' that occured in a television studio or how to escape a blocked cave. Solving these smaller puzzle plots always involved the various species of Pokémon and their specific powers: sometimes you had to deduce which Pokémon was the 'culprit' by observing the clues and figuring out what kind of Pokémon would be able to do such a thing, sometimes you had to pick the right Pokémon to help you with a certain task, considering their special powers and characteristics. The game was also really intent on presenting a fair play mystery too, as it was always sure to inform the player in various ways what the characteristics of these Pokémon were beforehand, so even people new to Pokémon could enjoy the game. It resulted in unique situations, where you had 'crimes' committed by invisible characters etc., but which where still absolutely fair because each Pokémon and their powers are documented and well-presented in the game.

This element isn't really present in the movie, sadly to say. While Tim and Pikachu have plenty of screentime together, there's barely any mystery-solving that is truly dependent on Pokémon and their powers. Most Pokémon that appear are either just background characters, or have fallen victim to the experiments and gone berserk, attacking our heroes. There's one minor moment in the finale that actually has some good foreshadowing that involves Pokémon powers, but that is all: you don't get those moments from the game where Tim and Pikachu really sit down, consider all that has happened and manage to deduce how it was done and which Pokémon were used to accomplish certain tasks. Because of that, most Pokémon don't really even feel involved in the story of Pokémon Detective Pikachu: they're just there as props and hardly interact with other characters or the plot. Which is a real shame, for if there's one thing the Detective Pikachu game really did well, is portray a world where Pokémon and humans live together, and build a mystery plot on that.

Pokémon Detective Pikachu has its moments as a live-action Pokémon movie, even if it's never outstanding or going beyond (reserved) expectations. The quips and banter of Pikachu are fun to watch, and the story is not as bad as you'd first fear when hearing the words live-action and Pokémon together. It's just a shame that as a mystery movie, it basically ignores all the potential the original source videogame offered. Had it gone the effort to really integrate the fantastical of the various Pokémon species up to with a mystery plot or even smaller puzzles/problems in the story, I might have been able to recommend Pokémon Detective Pikachu as a mystery movie (for kids), similar to how the Detective Pikachu does work as a standalone mystery game, but as it is now, I can only see Pokémon Detective Pikachu as a Pokémon movie. Disney's Zootopia (2016) is similar in concept, but was more entertaining as a mystery movie too.