Pokémon Detective Pikachu

Spoiler-free!

I am not educated in Pokémon, so forgive me for the following. That's the thing about this movie though -- it trusts its audience to know, or to be able to pick up with minimal exposition, and that opens up a ton of space for expansive storytelling. Also, wise-cracking one-liners and fuzzy yellow adorableness!

And old-fashioned mystery!

In a city where humans and Pokémon live in equality, Tim (Justice Smith) gets the news that his estranged detective dad has died. When he goes to clean out his apartment, he finds a deer-stalker-wearing Pikachu, and is surprised to find that he can understand what he's saying. (I suppose it wouldn't occur to him to be surprised that he sounds like Ryan Reynolds.) Pikachu claims to be Tim's dad's Pokémon partner, and though he has amnesia he's almost certain that Tim's dad is still alive. They join forces (reluctantly on Tim's part, who used to be obsessed with Pokémon but now wants nothing to do with them) to track down the trail of clues in search of him.

Instantly you get an old detective noir vibe which pairs perfectly with the cyberpunk world. They lean into it more than is required, and as a noir fan I appreciated that. It's mostly present visually, with the apartment buildings and Venetian blinds and neon cityscapes, but there's also a hardboiled interrogation (through mime for a good laugh), dramatic plot twists, a secret laboratory, and shady characters. And an intrepid, spunky reporter girl (Kathryn Newton) who knows something sinister is going on. The plot is easy to follow and if you were inclined to think ahead you might figure out the destination fairly quickly, but I was simply too swept up in the story and fun atmosphere to even try and predict anything.

Bill Nighy and Ken Watanabe are also there. And another Deadpool vet, Karan Soni has a cameo type role.

In cases like this it helps to be like a kid, oblivious to tropes and probable outcomes. It is a kid's movie after all. But it's also good nostalgia fodder for adults too, who grew up with the game. I didn't myself, and felt a warm welcome stepping into the Pokémon world for the first time. It's good nostalgia because it doesn't draw attention to that aspect. It doesn't even appear to be made with adults in mind, just age-appropriate at such a high quality that anyone can enjoy. It deserves to have fun with silly tropes and to not worry about a complex plot or trying to avoid cliches. Those things are naturally included, and it does justice to them instead of attempting to circumvent them out of fear or misunderstanding.

It's like a throwback to before tropes were taboo -- and to a time before the Great Franchise Push. This movie attempts no sequel-baiting, and leaves no ends loose. It's a complete, stand-alone story, and that may be my favorite thing about it of all. Fully rendered; leaves nothing off the table; explores as far as it can as fast as it can, knowing this is its one shot to satisfy. The world building is effortless because of how much ground is covered. It doesn't dawdle but is eager to move further, and forward, to the next cool place and the next fun and informative scene. Plentiful fun and plentiful content, existing together instead of distracting from the other.

As it should be for a no-holds-barred entertaining time!

For instance, there was one action sequence that I found incredibly boring, but they moved on from it so quickly that it barely made a dent in my enjoyment. And I know there were one or two jokes that I didn't find at all funny, but since none of the jokes are overplayed (hello, Marvel) I simply forgot them, and there was no ill effect. The whole movie seems to exist because of how funny Ryan Reynolds can be, so scene-stealing might be expected, but he doesn't. Certainly not from Justice Smith, even though I expect he could have without proper control. The characters are crafted to work together and play off each other, so there aren't distracting rabbit trails of one-upping humor.

The story is Tim's, and Smith carries the movie more than you'd expect, and does it well. The best work I've seen him do. And Reynolds isn't solely for comedy though that's where he shines. Tim and Pikachu's developing friendship has all the ups and downs that a good story needs, and the movie doesn't shy away from drama. It pulls off a winning theme to hold together all the adventuring, detecting, action, and comedy with the glue of deeper meaning. And the structure is very solid. I feel silly being impressed that it didn't fall apart in the end, but that's just the standard of late I suppose. All my issues are in details and are less missteps than things that didn't work for me personally.

There was basically nothing that detracted from the movie objectively. Even the bits I didn't care for are hard to recall.

It's not going to turn me into a Pokémon fan or anything, but since I've always been a fan a solid and meaningful stories, with engaging characters populating vast and fantastic imaginative worlds with devotion and humor -- it did all it needed in order to leave me happy as a Pikachu getting his chin scratched!

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

Spoilers!

So now the island that housed the disastrous theme park Jurassic World of the last movie has a volcano on it, and it's going to explode. Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard), turned from prim and proper business woman to free-spirited animal lover in the last film, is heading up an organization to save the dinos. The government decides to stay out of it, so she jumps at the opportunity when a private company run by Rafe Spall offers to help her relocate the animals. Then she ropes in Owen (Chris Pratt) because his favorite Raptor, Blue, is still on the island.

Should've bombed the island as soon as all the humans got off. Then they wouldn't have this problem.

But surprise! Rafe Spall isn't actually relocating the dinos to another safe island -- he's bringing them to the mainland and keeping them in the cellar of a massive estate that belonged to John Hammond of the original, original film. What could possibly go wrong? Oh and Dr. Wu (BD Wong) helped him and Toby Jones create a new, new dino by mixing Raptor with the Indominous Rex of the last film. The Indoraptor. Super creative name, yeah? They plan on bidding all of them off to the wealthy and ill-intentioned of the world. Things go exactly as you imagine they will.

And that's not really a bad thing in itself. The giant house wound up being a fun set piece for the last act; the first was getting on and off the island, and the second was adventures stowed-away on the transport ship. With a little tweaking it could have been a rollicking and pure-blooded adventure. But it gets distracted, by focusing way too hard on... trying to teach us a lesson? They were pushing us to feel sympathy for the dinos, which I guess they didn't realize is something we naturally feel. Dinosaurs are freaking awesome, and unless they're actively portrayed as evil beings, we not going to be eager to see them die.

I mean seriously -- look how freaking cute she is!

But they went all ham-handed on the tragedy of their situation anyway, and went so far overboard with it. At the end of the first act as they sail away on the ship, a Brontosaurus is left behind, literally calling to them from the dock as the ash and lava catches up to it. The music swells dramatically; the cloud engulfs the majestic creature; the fire lights its silhouette as it rears and seems to dissolve away.... and I was about to roll on the floor laughing. Feels bad. The harder I tried not to, the funnier it became. I did manage to laugh quietly, so hopefully I didn't annoy the person next to me.

There's also a big plot line involving Blue being a good dino, and one secondary bad guy (Ted Levine) who pulls teeth out of the dinos to collect for a necklace. In case the point about him being evil wasn't clear enough. But guess what they neglected to do? Yep, create sympathy for any of the humans. Maisie (Isabella Sermon) is the most because she spends time alone figuring out the bad guy's evil plot and running for her life. Claire and Owen are complete blanks except that they care about the dinos, which doesn't help me much. They had a bad break and allude to that, and by the end they're kissing again, but nothing happened to get them there.

If one shared near-death experience couldn't keep them together, why should a second? 

And the two sidekicks, Franklin (Justice Smith) and Zia (Daniella Pineda), I actually forgot existed whenever they disappeared from the screen. Everything they did could've been accomplished by Claire and Owen, or was unnecessary in the first place. Like, they have a whole sequence where they reboot the ventilation system to save the caged dinos from poisonous gas, but later their efforts have only stalled for time -- so the leak could've been slower in the first place with no different outcome. They didn't annoy me particularly, but were blank too, and if their time had been redistributed through a smaller cast -- but the problem wasn't lack of screen time, but of attentive writing.

The poisonous gas bit was inter-cut with Claire, Owen, and Maisie hiding from the Indoraptor, in what is probably the best extended sequence of the film. The dark house of endless rooms and museum-displays of fossils, the one dino tracking them down. It's the classic Jurassic Park stuff and only seemed lacking because it wasn't given time to breathe. It needed to revel more. Linger and seep in. It did that in brief staccato moments, but jumped around too much for the feeling to stay.

"Rafe?" "Yes, Toby?" "Are we the bad guys?" "I think." "Well, crap."

And it's probably just me but I wanted a lot more out of the villain. I like Rafe Spall. But he did his thing and then disappeared until it was time for his death scene. And speaking of deaths, literally all but one death goes as follows: person discovers dino danger; person tries very hard to survive; person survives by skin of teeth; person relaxes -- bam! -- person is dino lunch. Not that that's a terrible way to do a death scene, but a little variety would've been nice. Also, I felt weird watching bad guys get munched on. It was like the movie wanted us to enjoy it; to cheer or feel satisfaction over it.

In the previous movies, even a villain death was played for horror, not elation, right? We felt they deserved it, but it was still grisly and disturbing. It's also worth noting that no good guy is killed by a dino in this film. Not a single one. Not even a neutral, innocent bystander. It's not like even a hint of stakes were ever in place for anyone except the dinos -- that was just adding fuel to the fire.

Forgive me if I want to care about human characters in a movie where the human characters are the leads.

Fallen Kingdom builds on a decently solid skeleton, and that keeps it from falling into a distracted oblivion. That, and the innate likability of Pratt, Howard, and newbie Sermon. A quality level equal to Jurassic World was out of reach I think, simply because the "horror at the theme park" premise is tough to top -- but though it's not unworthy of the name, it clearly could've been better than this.

Paper Towns

Spoilers are marked.

This story, adapted from the 2008 novel by John Green, is from the perspective of Quentin, a nice but kinda geeky high school senior who is totally head-over-heels for his neighbor, Margo Roth Spiegleman. Margo is basically the most amazing and popular and epic person there is, and sometimes she disappears randomly and goes on grand adventures, always leaving clues to her whereabouts. When she leaves, and leaves clues for Q to find, he is determined to do what no one else has done for her, and find her.

I adored the book. I liked it better than The Fault in Our Stars. (In spite of a considerably more rocky content terrain.)

It's sad, but I'm going to go ahead and say it: this adaptation does not meet the great levels of the source novel. In many ways, it's not even close. Then, in some other ways it's exactly on, only those are the points that are less important.

Quentin is played by Nat Wolff, and he is Q, through and through. That is, his looks and mannerisms are perfect. However, though he looked perfect, he couldn't bring Q to life; through him we don't get to see into Q's mind and heart. Maybe he had it in him and just wasn't given a proper chance to play the part to the level, but the fact remains that the most alive version of Q is still on the page. I loved Wolff's performance is TFIOS, but this one was not done justice.

At the same time, he was the character that was portrayed with the most justice.

Margo is even worse. The thing is, I'm not sure anyone could have played Margo; how do you cast a person who is indescribably epic, beautiful but not typical, and the epitome of awesome, who everyone wants to be friends with? Answer: you don't. But you can definitely do better than Cara Delevingne. She's not a terrible actress, but she's no Margo. She doesn't impress us with the idea that she is an at all remarkable person, let alone an understandably popular one. Margo's unique draw manifested in the book mostly by her way of speaking -- she speaks like John Green writes -- with unabashed poetic feeling, and with elegance and charisma. Here, she dryly drones out shortened, unembellished versions of her animated speeches and they float to the floor like so much blank paper.

-- Spoilers --
Then, the point of the story was destroyed by having her real self not be so different from her fake, paper, "awesome" self. She doesn't get mad at Q for finding her, she doesn't callously not call her family; she doesn't show that she's a selfish, cold, uncaring and faithless individual; she comes across just as nice and fake as before. Her real side is too fake, and her fake side is too real.
-- End --

Is this who teenagers aspire to be like? Should they?

The supporting cast that includes Austin Abrams as Ben, and Justice Smith as Radar all had the required quirks described in the book, but it was like they and the filmmakers were just going through the motions because they had to, and not because they really cared. A small exception for this goes to Halston Sage as Lacey; she had a moment or two more of genuine success than the guys. Radar's girlfriend Angela (Jaz Sinclair) had an expanded role for no good reason. She was good as far as the rest of them, but wasted more time than her contributions were worth.

Adaption-wise the plot basics were there, but the themes were mostly flip-flopped. This movie took the bold and harsh, but true and moving statements from the book, and changed them so that they meant the exact opposite. Only some basics of a few main themes were left intact, but not to the level of boldness it needed. Dark, gritty things were lightened; deep, heartfelt things were made shallow. Any kind of urgency or importance was totally, wantonly gone. The film also went out of its way to keep as much inappropriate content as it could, sacrificing time that could have been full of meaning for empty dialogue that wasn't even funny most of the time.

I would much rather they'd change the plot events and keep the themes and, you know, the story's point.

As to the non-adapting parts of the film-making, there was one interesting shot that had style, and one fun cameo, and a few highlight scenes and moments; the rest of the movie was confusingly dull and muddled. It droned -- like a toy helicopter that doesn't have enough battery power left to get off the ground. I don't know whether or not the director, Jake Schreier, should be blamed for this, but he seems the most likely option. It was nowhere near as lively, sharp and open as it should have been -- as the novel was. It just sits in the book's shadow. Or it is the book's shadow -- it has nothing more to offer, only less. I'm sorry I have to be so hard on this movie. It's really not a terrible film; only in comparison with what should have been. I can't see it without that influencing me, and neither would I chose to if I could.

Paper Towns is not much more than a paper movie of empty entertainment, with teenagers doing their typical empty teenage things, trying to convince you that that's what fun is, and that's what living is, and love is; preaching that you should be real, and all the while on the inside being just as paper as any other empty teenage dramady.