Blazbaros

Or as I like to call it, Defective Chalupa.

I was really hoping I would like this movie more, but now that I think back on it, I don't know what I was expecting really.  The trailers and marketing really worked on me and got me hyped to the point where it overshot the film I suppose.  6/10.

Its kind of disappointing, really.  I enjoyed the set up and the first half of the film was pretty good, it had some beats like it was out of a noir film, but that wasn't capitalized on enough I don't know.  More importantly, you got Ryan Reynolds as Pikachu, who totally steals the entire show and carries it all the way to the end, and that alone is worth the price of admission.  Its just such an absurd thing that I'm not sure anyone could have done it better.

Anything beyond him feels wasted and undercooked.  The human characters are wet blankets and the most uninteresting things to watch.  When the character of Lucy shows up, she acts like a total caricature of herself, which I actually found hilarious, and she felt like she fell out of the live-action Speed Racer movie.  Sadly that doesn't keep up, nor do any other characters act like this and she settles down pretty quick.  I feel like if everyone except for the main character did this with their role and just overacted the entire time, it'd at least be more entertaining.  Otherwise they're just dull.

The villain's plot, once discovered, is just lame and boring, not to mention weird.  I'll try not to spoil it, but you can understand why he did what he did to HIMSELF, but extending that to everyone seems out of left field.  How the heroes come across this plot and piece together the clues is also poorly executed, it seems like the right information at the right time is delivered to them on a silver platter.  There's not much I can say that would easily fix any of this, it really needs an overhaul to be more interesting.

I also understand that this is a mystery movie, but it could have done with some more battling, that's kind of pokemon's shtick.

Now despite ALL of that, there's some good points, because this movie isn't a dumpster fire by any stretch of the meaning.  Ryme City is a pretty ballin' place, its well realized, feels lived in and at night is just DRENCHED in neon.  The music is also very atmospheric and fits the tone, plus the use of classic pokemon tracks is on point.  The pokemon themselves look awesome, although seems to be only a limited number of them in the movie, you see a lot of repeats.  Mr. Mime's scenes are by far the best.  It also manages to be a sequel to the original pokemon movie which is. . . interesting.

If they were to do a sequel in this style, I would totally be down for it, but certain things happen in this film that may make that difficult to say the least.  Here's hoping.