Pokémon Detective Pikachu 4k Blu-Ray Review

August 5, 2019 at 8:21pm
By Jason Stettner

Pokémon Detective Pikachu follows one young man that’s dealing with the loss of his father, and the sudden appearance of Ryan Reynolds as a Pikachu. It really is just that actor being himself, in Pokémon form. This film aims to bring the universe of the franchise to the big screen, by presenting a more casual story.

It’s more of a straight forward tale that acts as though you’re familiar with the themes and overall world it’s presenting. This is fine, it works and eases into a place where Pokémon directly interact with humans. This is of course a live action movie in case you weren’t aware of that and it places these creatures throughout a regular environment. They feel a bit out of place at times visually and it did once again stick out to me like it did in the theaters. Something about the weighting, or well placement that feels odd.

I did like the push for more gritty looking critters, and they were adorable at times as well. The narrative is rather weak in this one, very predictable and at times a tad silly. It’s a light movie in terms of what it brings, but was far too casual of a viewing. It doesn’t really surprise, except for a neat twist at the end which is quite small in its impact.

Pokémon Detective Pikachu 4k Special Features

The Pokémon Detective Pikachu 4k Blu-Ray comes with a number of special features. These are available to view on the traditional Blu-Ray disc as opposed to the 4k one. They include the following selections that can be viewed as a bundle or individually. "Alternate Opening”, “My Pokémon Adventure”, “Creating the World of Detective Pikachu”, “Mr Mime’s Audio Commentary”, “Ryan Reynolds – Outside the Actor’s Studio” and a “Music Video”. There are other short segments as well aside from these. This package also included a special trading card and a detective mode.

I thought the detective mode was a nice addition, and the card is great for those younger ones that collect for the regular trading card game. I was a bit disappointed by the extra features in this, most of them I recall being used to actually promote the film while it was in theaters. They’re cool to have on disc, but if you take them away there isn’t a whole lot to this. There are some sub menus containing extra bits of features, but these seemed rather light. The alternate opening was neat, would have changed things up quite a bit. Overall I felt they could have done more with the extras, felt minimal.

The Conclusion

The Pokémon Detective Pikachu 4k Blu-Ray package is a bit light in terms of new extra special features with a movie that was just alright. I felt this film was rather predictable and that the CGI elements weren’t quite developed well enough. They definitely had a neat idea with presenting the gritty style of the creatures in live action, that worked.

The general narrative was just rather weak in this, and not all that exciting. For fans they’ll likely enjoy this experience, that being said it does come across as a rather weak movie. The Detective Mode was a nice addition to this package, and I’m sure fans will also like the special trading card, a nice extra.

I just felt they could done more to prop this movie up in terms of the extras, many were used in regular marketing which doesn’t exactly help in selling this physical package. I wasn’t too thrilled by the movie, but it’s a solid watch that I imagine many would fine enjoyable to a degree. It’s not hard to sit through, just rather bland at times.

Pokémon Detective Pikachu 4k Blu-Ray Review
Provided by Warner Brothers

Rating Overall: 5.6