While I like Pokemon, I've never been a collector of cards or watcher of the cartoons. Still, the characters are cute and I like the idea of the competitive fights. From the trailer, the movie looked funny and cute, so I wanted to see it. And that's basically what you get from the film. Ryan Reynolds is funny and charming as the title character. The Pokemon are cute and the CGI is well done. Yet, underneath the surface, the plot is nearly nonexistent and the acting is subpar at best. So, is it worth watching? Yes. It's cute and funny. You'll laugh and be visually entertained. But once it's over, you realize you really gained nothing from the time spent watching.

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 is a really enjoyable Pokémon movie. Well, not perfect. Because there are some issues like the movie can sometimes get predictable and the characters are kinda generic. But it really makes up those issues thanks to an enjoyable story that's about Tim Goodman solving the mystery to find out what happened to his father. It does have heart into it. The action moments make the movie exciting. Ryan Reynolds plays a great and funny performance as Picachu. And the visuals are absolutely incredible that brings Pokémon to life. Because of it, of course Pokémon fans are going to enjoy it. This also is worth a watch for those that want to see a good movie based on a video game. It may not be perfect, but I would definitely say this is one of the better movies based on a video game.