Don’t get me wrong, there was a lot of Psyduck, so I’m quite happy…but we all could use more Psyduck.
In non-Psyduck related news, I thought the movie was nice. It wasn’t as good as I was hoping because, honestly, there wasn’t enough interaction with the Pokemon. I understand this isn’t a Pokemon movie, it’s a movie with Pokemon in it, but the prospect of “a city where people and Pokemon live side-by-side” I wanted more interaction with different Pokemon doing “normal” things. I don’t just want to see a Machamp directing traffic, I want to interact with him and see others doing that.
Ryan Reynolds is really good as Pikachu and brings a lot of PG Deadpool into the mix, but that’s a good thing…although it could get A LITTLE much at times.
The story/plot was fine. Mrs. Cups figured the whole thing out within the first half hour of the movie, but it’s a kids movie so it’s not like this is Inception or anything. The movie was underwritten a bit and flowed way too fast. The pacing needed to slow down a bit, and do it naturally. It’s obvious when the movie hits you over the head with EMOTION! and that always bugs me. Plus the EMOTION! didn’t land because Justice Smith was a terrible actor in the EMOTION! scenes. He’s very good naturally and when jovial, not so much any other time.
Final Thoughts: The movie was perfectly fine, but not great. Poke and non Poke fans will enjoy it equally because the inside nods to Poke fans aren’t prevalent enough for a Poke Nerd to really enjoy the movie outside of “Hey I love Squirtle and there he is on the big screen!” Parents being drug to see this by their kids won’t hate it at all either…that always helps.
The ending is fucked up totally and makes no sense. The big reveal doesn’t mesh with how one of the main characters interacted with the other main character throughout the rest of the movie, in my opinion.
I saw the movie having never played Pokemon. All I know about it is what my kid has told me. So I was watching the movie just as a movie, and it was pretty bad. Maybe the excitement of seeing all the different Pokemon realized makes it better for some, but as a movie it was sub-standard. The acting was terrible for the most part, the plot was revealed through otherwise pointless dialog and straight-up explaining to the audience instead of showing, etc.
I think it would be okay if you accept that this is a movie for kids, and judge it by the standards of children’s movies and not, say, the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Yeah, it was pretty linear in plotting. Clearly a movie aimed at kids and those wanting to see pokemon come to life and interact with the world at large.
Pleasant enough, if you don’t expect more than it can deliver. I’ll bet anything there’ll be a sequel.
I thought the story was horrible. It was just lazy, lazy writing. Some of the CGI looked really, really bad, but that was minor to me. Look at the background pokemon at the end in the crowd scenes. They’re just floating there. OTOH, I did like how the animators made the CGI stuff part of the environment. When they walked through dirt, their fur was dirty. Nice touch.
Anyway, an example of my problems with the story.
Apparently, dad’s body was never found, which seems not at all unusual for the police lieutenant. Then he shows video of the crash, and I’m thinking:
that’s now how cars crash, obviously it was blown up,
there’s no reason there wouldn’t be a body left behind,
so obviously, the lieutenant is in on it.
I kept waiting for the big reveal on the police conspiracy which never came. This is just horrible storytelling. Have the car spin out of control off a bridge and go into the river. Dad crawls to shore and collapses. The lizard thing then zaps dad and pikachu. “We are so sorry, we never recovered your father’s body. It was washed away in the river. Based on how badly damaged the car was when we recovered it, there’s no way he could have survived.” Problem solved.
There was some little kid there in pikachu pajamas, and I bet he loved every minute of it.
Storywise, its meh. Interesting, but you know what’s going to happen.
What really saves this movie is the CGI. I saw it in 3D, and it was stunning. It was like I was looking through a window into another world. The Pokémon were done fantastically, and they were true to their origins. I had some mental size issues on a few of them, but they were done very, very well.
Its a kid’s movie. I wasn’t expecting much from it, but it was a great visual treat.
Gengar was terrifying looking that’s for sure. The three starters were also just as cute as they should have been. This was definitely the best non-Psyduck related part of the movie.