Detective Pikachu is Who Framed Roger Rabbit in Pokémon footie pajamas

On my way out of Pokémon Detective Pikachu, I overheard a dad and his two kids, who were dissecting the film’s quality.

“How was it?” he asked the two of them.

The older one said, somewhat reserved, “Yeah, I think about four stars,” before the younger one let out a hearty cry of, “FOUR STARS!!!”

“Wow, you guys really liked it!” Dad said, somewhat surprised.

“What did you think, Dad?”

He thought for a moment, then laughed. “I gotta be honest with you guys. I fell asleep.”

As they left, the dad peppered the kids with questions about the movie — about which Pokémon did what, and what some of the inside jokes and Easter eggs that he had missed were. At several points, he would say, “Now, if you don’t know Pokémon, you might not understand that part,” before one of his kids would sigh and respond, “But you slept through that part!”

Most likely, though, he hadn’t. Or if he did, it wouldn’t make much of a difference: Detective Pikachu could be a tough sit for people who don’t know a dang thing about Pokémon and feel like they need to learn all about the pocket monsters and their mysterious lore to follow along. The film is a surprisingly twisty detective story — a kiddie noir with neon-soaked streets and double crosses nestled within double crosses — and it can become easy to get lost in the dozens upon dozens of Pokémon that are at least somewhat integral to the plot.

So let me throw a curveball (or should I say ... a curve ... Poké Ball) at you: I don’t know a dang thing about Pokémon, and I really had a great time with Detective Pikachu. My knowledge of the games and their various spinoffs largely boils down to knowing a few Pokémon names and having a vague understanding of how they do battle. But I found plenty to enjoy here, and I was never once confounded by what was happening onscreen.

My guess is that the movie worked for me because it’s canny about which other pop culture touchstones it lures into its orbit. That is to say — you might not know Pokémon, but you’ll likely know one of the movie’s other reference points. Let’s break a few of them down to explain why this thing works.

1) Who Framed Roger Rabbit

Warner Bros.

The world of Detective Pikachu revolves around Ryme City, a massive, planned metropolis where man and Pokémon live side-by-side in harmony. Our hero, Tim (Justice Smith), has to go to Ryme City after the strange disappearance of his estranged father — but Tim is no fan of Pokémon and is a bit taken aback when he has to crack the case with the help of his father’s old Pokémon partner, the Detective Pikachu you’ve heard so much about. There’s a strange twist to this Pikachu: To Tim, Pikachu sounds like movie star Ryan Reynolds. To everybody else, he just ... sounds like Pikachu.

This basic setup — place where humans live alongside non-humans in weird symbiosis; mysterious case involving a disappearance; strained relationship between the protagonist and the “others” of this world — is very similar to the 1988 classic Who Framed Roger Rabbit, which paired humans with myriad classic cartoon characters. And like Roger Rabbit, Detective Pikachu is at its best when it’s marrying madcap comedy to a surprisingly sophisticated mystery.

Where Detective Pikachu falls a bit short is in how disconnected from our reality it all is. Roger Rabbit earnestly wondered what our world would be like if we lived alongside cartoons, while its plot was inspired by the construction of the LA freeway system. Detective Pikachu has a handful of real-world concerns (about which we’ll talk more in a second), but they mostly play second fiddle to the lengthy set of cameos from assorted Pokémon.

But like Roger Rabbit before it, Detective Pikachu is pretty smart about making sure you know exactly what Pokémon it’s talking about, even if you don’t know one Pokémon from another. You don’t need a lengthy introduction to a Pokémon named Mr. Mime to get what his whole deal is. You just need to know what mimes are.

But where Roger Rabbit aped Chinatown for its visuals, Detective Pikachu sets its sights on a different modern noir ...

2) Blade Runner

Okay, call it Day-Glo Blade Runner. (You know, for kids!)

If there’s a reason for non-Pokéfans to see this movie, beyond its silly sense of humor, it’s because it’s surprisingly gorgeous on an aesthetic level. The rain-soaked streets reflect bright pops of neon; the surrounding countryside looks lush and lovely; and every frame features a cameo from some Pokémon living alongside humans in a way that imagines an entire alternate world.

The look of the film — courtesy of director Rob Letterman and cinematographer John Mathieson — doesn’t exactly copy Ridley Scott’s 1982 sci-fi noir classic, but you can sense that the two often turned to grab some image or idea from the earlier film, then twisted it through what amounts to a Pokémon Instagram filter. Thus, the movie almost functions as a kind of “child’s first noir” primer, for when your kids need to learn that all institutions are corrupt and not to be trusted.

3) Fox News (and the Rupert Murdoch media empire more generally)

Warner Bros.

Somewhat remarkably, Detective Pikachu contains a veiled portrayal of James and Lachlan Murdoch’s attempts to wrestle control of their father Rupert’s media empire. Granted, the two have been condensed into one man here — Roger Clifford, played by Chris Geere in a playful riff on his You’re the Worst character — but the whole thing is worth it just to see Bill Nighy as the film’s take on Rupert himself, Howard Clifford.

Nighy is one of the best actors at putting hilariously mendacious spins on random words, and when I first heard him say the word “Pokémon” in the movie’s early going, I knew I was going to be in the tank for this thing. (Nighy also really sinks his teeth into “Pikachu,” as well as the name of another Pokémon I dare not mention, for fear of spoiling what amounts to a fairly significant Pokémon character, or so the reaction of the Pokéheads at my screening would suggest. Suffice to say, Nighy is great at saying that Pokémon’s name.)

Anyway, the whole thing with the Clifford family is complete balderdash — they apparently built Ryme City from scratch, after Howard beat a life-threatening disease by harnessing the power of Pokémon or something — but the movie very wisely just says, “They run a propagandistic cable news empire, where they also appear on TV a lot for some reason.” You get it!

4) The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew novels (as well as all Girl Reporter stories)

Detective Pikachu is a kids’ movie, yeah, but it’s probably more appropriate for slightly older kids; it’s not quite one preschoolers will be super into. (Then again, it has lots of bright colors, and Pikachu is cute as shit, so who can say.)

Much of this stems from the plotting, which is surprisingly complex, while never quite labyrinthine. The climax of the movie features several dramatic reveals — most of which adults will see coming, but at least one of which vaguely surprised me in a, “Huh, that’s kinda weird” way — and simply keeping up with the case that Tim and Pikachu have to crack requires tracking a number of different story threads.

The movie doesn’t plant lots of red herrings or anything like that. (Just from reading the cast list of this movie, you know who the bad guy is.) But it does come up with an elaborate conspiracy, with many moving parts that Tim and Pikachu are just barely able to stay ahead of.

The mystery, then, is an excuse for lots of narrow scrapes and last-second escapes, which puts the movie in line with the Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew novels. Tim is supposedly in his early 20s, but he definitely reads more along the lines of an emancipated teenager, akin to the crime-solving teens that star in these books.

The movie also has a requisite sidekick whose entire character development can be summed up in “the girl.” She’s named Lucy, and she narrowly escapes being an utterly thankless character by virtue of actress Kathryn Newton, who plays her as a Nancy Drew, 1930s girl reporter heroine-type. (She’s an intern at the cable news network.)

Whether this works for you or not will depend on how much tolerance you have for knowing winks to the audience, but I found Newton’s work to be a hoot.

Also, she has a Psyduck she straps to her back like she’s ready to backpack around Europe with it. How can you not like that?

5) Ray Kurzweil’s writings on the coming Singularity

Warner Bros.

The deeper we get into the digital age, the more we feel an anxiety about our post-human future. Whether that takes the form of a literal future, where we’ve all died, or a figurative one, where we’ve all been turned into machines on some level, is open to debate.

But scientist and pop philosopher Ray Kurzweil believes that we are on the verge of something called “the Singularity,” in which we’ll all become one with the machines, humanity’s weaknesses will be boiled away, and we will live in digital paradises. We’ll just have to cease being what are strictly “human beings” to accomplish this. Yay?

There are plenty of science fiction works that have dug into this idea, but it’s perhaps most prominent in the worlds of anime and manga. Indeed, Ghost in the Shell, one of the most famous anime in the West, is very explicitly about the idea of what happens when your body becomes a shell, when we move past easy conceptions of what it means to have a physical form. How do ideas about gender, race, and identity break down when that happens? How do we think about ourselves if the lines between me and you start to blur and break down? What does it mean to be “alive” or “dead”?

Anyway, Detective Pikachu is kind of about that, but I’d rather not spoil how it is for you. Just trust me. It’s in there.

Detective Pikachu opens in theaters Friday, May 10. Pika ... ... pika?

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