Can you give a rough range of age appropriateness? How young does it go, like a 5 year old who has seen the original Star Wars trilogy?
There was one really scary scene right after Pikachu is met and another one that wasn’t quite as bad later. There was a approximately 4 year old in the seats in front of us who lost her mind on the first scary scene but did ok after that.
Her father “solved” it by yelling at her to be quiet while she screamed in terror. Eventually the scene ended and she stopped.
Unfortunately that’s all I got, I only brought my older kids and they are 9 and 11.
Edit: One of my kids says my 5 year old would do fine and the other says the opposite.
My five year old was fine.
Pretty OK. I though the acting/lines for most of the characters other than the protagonist/pikachu were pretty bad/wooden in the beginning, but it got a lot better as the movie progressed. Good fun, and the kids enjoyed it. My 6-year old was along, and although he found a couple of the scenes scary, a little hand-holding was well enough.
Read some of the negative reviews, and I wonder if a lot of them come from people who want this movie to be something it’s not. It’s a pretty straightforward family film, so criticizing it for not having a more convoluted plot kind of misses the point. For what it is, it’s good.
My nearly 7-year-old son saw it today and he gives it an enthusiastic thumbs up. Hope that helps you guys figure out whether to see it or not.
My son loved it.
I did hope for something more, I have to admit. The whole concept of a live action detective pokemon is so whack I thought they might do something to give it cult classic character. Alas, it was played straight as a family film, even less edgy than a pokemon cartoon.
Did the 11yo like it? Mine want’s to go.
If he has any love for Pokemon, I’d say it’s a no-brainer. My 10-yo loved it.
I guess I’ll have to watch it.
pika…
Definitely!
Overall I was underwhelmed by this. I thought it was sluggish and moved at a very slow pace. This was most likely due to the lack of any good jokes, or funny moments. The story was OK and I can see where Pokemon fans would like seeing so many different Pokemon - but even there I felt the views were short and illustrated very few powers.
I agree with Anklebiter:
I’d recommend waiting for it to come out on video.
Man, we were laughing on the regular. Especially at the Mr. Mime interrogation and Pikachu walking down the road singing the Pokemon theme while sobbing. It’s not perfect by any means - I would have liked it to lean harder into the noir angle, and while the jokes were more adult than I necessarily expected, it plays it pretty safe in terms of overall plot and characterization. But it’s not like I was ever going to be its core demographic.
Also, how fucking adorable is that Pikachu? I wanted to pet it every single moment it was onscreen.
The Alamo preshow video roll was magical, also. Rapidfire dives into all the most insane Pokemon-related commercials (mostly Japanese, of course, bless them), goofiest fan videos, etc.
That was my wife’s comment as well. She had not expected to like this at all, but she had a surprisingly good time with it.
I think people going to see this need to temper their expectations that this is very firmly a family/kid-friendly film. It’s not trying to be a cult-classic or edgy - it plays it safe to produce a satisfactory movie (and possibly with an eye toward kicking off a new Pokemon universe).
Psyduck is the real star of the movie.
PSYDUCK
PSYDUCK
PSYDUCK
I am so sad you can’t see my first animation passes. I had him going into a sort of epileptic fit crying into the floor when he saw the two conversing. I guess the client thought it was a bit too much and made it a soft hand twitching thing instead. I mean, Pika did say he explodes when he’s stressed. Ah well!
You were an animator on this? That’s awesome!
just filling a two month hole in my schedule, so mostly just that little part.
Very cool.
This leaves HBO Max on Monday. Last chance.
I really enjoyed it. This is my first exposure to Pokemon, and it’s a very positive one.
The only thing I didn’t understand at all is the character of the intern journalist girl. It was like they put a character from a Disney show into this movie. And it’s bizarre, because she’s the only one behaving like she’s in a Disney show, and she can hear a laugh track that’s not there.
I watched this yesterday, with all my Pokémon knowledge coming through cultural osmosis, and I loved it! Ryan Reynolds is fantastically charming throughout and it’s worth it just for him. I wonder how many (if any) of his lines were scripted.