Detective Pikachu (2019) 🔍⚡

“Case Closed? Not Quite.”


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Lets start by showing y’all the trailers shall we?

🎥 Trailers

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📖 Non-Spoiler Plot Overview

Detective Pikachu takes us into Ryme City, a neon-soaked metropolis where humans and Pokémon live side by side. When Tim Goodman (Justice Smith) learns his detective father has gone missing, he stumbles onto the case with an unlikely partner: Pikachu (Ryan Reynolds), who can talk — but only Tim can understand him.

On paper? Genius. Pokémon has always been about bonds between people and Pokémon, and the buddy-cop angle with Reynolds’ wisecracking Pikachu sounds like a slam dunk. But in execution… well, things get more complicated.


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👥 Character Rundown

Detective Pikachu (Ryan Reynolds) – Quippy, caffeine-addicted, charming. Reynolds carries the movie with improv-style humor, giving Pikachu real personality.

Tim Goodman (Justice Smith) – The straight man of the duo. Sometimes works, sometimes feels flat, but the chemistry with Pikachu holds.

Lucy Stevens (Kathryn Newton) – Aspiring journalist with a Psyduck sidekick. Her energy is high, maybe a little cartoonish even for this world.

Howard Clifford (Bill Nighy) – The big corporate visionary. Feels like a Bond villain-lite.

Roger Clifford (Chris Geere) – His ambitious son, classic shady heir vibes.



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⏱️ Pacing / Flow

The movie moves fast and looks slick, but the mystery often takes a backseat to showing off Pokémon cameos. By the third act, it leans into a twist that’s more bizarre than satisfying. (Yes, I’m talking about “the Ryan Reynolds reveal.”)


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✅ Pros

Pokémon designs: Shockingly good. They nailed the live-action look — Charizard, Bulbasaur, Mr. Mime — all highlights.

Ryan Reynolds: Carrying the comedy on his back. Without him, this film doesn’t work.

World-building: Ryme City feels alive, like a place you’d want to explore in a game.

Nostalgia factor: For longtime Pokémon fans, just seeing creatures walking around is worth the ticket.



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❌ Cons

The mystery: Pretty generic. Feels like it was borrowed from a Saturday morning cartoon, not a full-blown detective noir.

Execution vs. concept: On paper, the idea sings; in practice, it wobbles between kid movie and noir parody, never fully committing to either.

Characters beyond Pikachu: Most humans (Tim, Lucy, the Cliffords) feel underwritten compared to the Pokémon.

The twist: Ryan Reynolds is Tim’s dad. Funny on paper, weird in the moment, and it doesn’t quite land.

Tone issues: Sometimes heartfelt, sometimes slapstick, sometimes dark — the shifts can be jarring.



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🎯 Final Thoughts

If you’ve asked me this movie, it feels like things happen. And that’s the best description you’re ever gonna get about this movie, it’s just that the movie feels weightless.

My brain after this movie asked me now answer me this would you have been better off if you didn’t see the movie? The answer to that is.

You wouldn’t be worse off. You wouldn’t be better off. You’d be… exactly the same.

So, pretty much you would just better off watching something else.

Detective Pikachu is one of those films that sounds like a slam dunk when you describe it in a sentence: Ryan Reynolds voices a talking Pikachu in a live-action Pokémon detective movie. And parts of it really do shine — the world looks amazing, Pikachu himself is a joy, and the novelty of seeing Pokémon this way can’t be overstated.

But once you move past the novelty, the cracks show. The story is thin, the supporting characters are forgettable, and the final act feels rushed and strange. It’s fun, but not flawless.


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⭐ Rating

7/10 ⚡🎩


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⚠️ Spoiler Warning


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🌀 Spoilers (Full Breakdown)

The story kicks off with Tim Goodman, a young man estranged from his detective father, Harry. When Harry is presumed dead after a mysterious car crash, Tim travels to Ryme City to handle his father’s affairs. That’s when he meets Pikachu — Harry’s partner, suffering from amnesia, and oddly enough, Tim is the only person who can understand him. This unlikely duo decides to solve the mystery together.

Their investigation leads them through the neon underbelly of Ryme City. First stop: Mr. Mime, in what’s easily one of the funniest sequences in the film. Tim and Pikachu interrogate him with pantomimed threats — gasoline, invisible matches — until Mime literally “mimes” himself into being trapped in an invisible box. It’s silly, absurd, and pure Pokémon humor.

Next, they stumble into an underground Pokémon fight club where Pikachu ends up in the ring against a very angry Charizard. The fight spirals out of control when mysterious purple gas (called R) triggers Pokémon into violent frenzies. The gas is connected to Harry’s supposed death, and all signs point to the involvement of Mewtwo, who escaped from captivity after the crash.

As Tim digs deeper, he discovers that Howard Clifford (Bill Nighy), a wealthy and seemingly benevolent corporate figure, has ulterior motives.

I’m gonna be real with y’all, i kind of forgot that there was a villain in this movie. Yeah that’s how forgettable he was.

Clifford reveals that Harry’s accident was no accident — and Mewtwo is central to his plan. His goal? To “evolve” humanity by merging humans with their Pokémon partners. Using Mewtwo’s power, Clifford begins transferring human consciousness into Pokémon bodies, turning Ryme City into a bizarre mashup of people and monsters.

The final act reveals the biggest twist: Harry never actually died. In the crash, Mewtwo saved him by merging his consciousness into Pikachu. That’s why Tim was the only one who could understand Pikachu — he was literally talking to his dad the whole time. Once Clifford is stopped and Mewtwo is freed, Harry is restored to his human body, played by none other than Ryan Reynolds himself.

The film closes with Tim choosing to stay in Ryme City and reconnect with his father. The buddy-cop adventure ends, but the bond between father and son remains intact.