Set in Ryme City, a neon-soaked experimental world in which humans and Pokemon co-exist in relative harmony*, this film has its fitfully entertaining charms.

Director Rob Letterman (a veteran of DreamWorks Animation who also helmed 2010’s effects-intensive “Gulliver’s Travels” movie) opens the film with a glimpse* of a car crash, which takes place near a heavily guarded research lab and involves Mewtwo, a genetically engineered version of one of the most powerful Pokemon, setting up the movie’s central mystery: What happened to Harry Goodman?

Taking many of its plot points from the 2016 Nintendo game of the same name, the storyline is centered around Tim Goodman (Justice Smith), the nerdy* 21-year-old son of a private investigator who is believed to have died in the suspicious* car crash. Upon arriving in Ryme City, the metropolis that was the scene of his estranged* dad’s crime-solving, Goodman meets his former partner, a coffee-guzzling fuzzy yellow Pikachu (Ryan Reynolds) who happens to speak English that only Goodman can hear.

As Harry’s partner, Pikachu was in the vehicle when it was blasted off a bridge. It’s only reasonable that Harry must still be out there too — although something’s playing tricks with Pikachu’s memory.

Determined to find out the truth behind his father’s disappearance, Goodman and Pikachu begin a trek* through Ryme City’s backstreets, following a cloud of dense purple smoke that will lead them to a top secret research facility that figures into the father’s possible death.

Along the way, they meet Lucy Stevens (Kathryn Newton), an unpaid TV intern who fancies* herself an investigative reporter, as well as Howard Clifford (Bill Nighy), the Richard Branson-like visionary* behind Ryme City whose spoiled son Roger (Chris Geere) serves as the over-reaching president of Clifford Enterprises. Of course, they also run into all manner of Pokemon, from Bulbasaurs to stressed-out Psyducks to, in one of the more amusing sequences, an especially annoying mime Pokemon.

Providing a sturdy throughline is Reynolds, who gives his world-weary Pikachu role the right balance of pith and pathos, proving adept at both tears and pratfalls*.(SD-Agencies)