Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Effing Hilarious, June 27, 2009
Saw this at Facets in Chicago last night, and it was amazing. It's one of those movies that I want to show to all my friends.
Fair warning, DON'T WATCH THE US TRAILER. They should fire whoever was responsible for that. This is a CGI action movie the same way "This is Spinal Tap" is a 90-minute live recorded performance by U2. That is to say, it's not. 90% of Big Man Japan is shot in a documentary style and it has a hilarious "slow burn" style of humor that is just not evident from the trailer. If you're expecting slapstick and big monster fights, you'll get some of that but it's not what the movie is all about. It's very Christopher-Guest-ish, so think "Waiting for Guffman" or "Best in Show" (or again, "This is Spinal Tap").
I probably laughed harder at the ending to this movie than I did at anything all year, and I feel sorry for the people who didn't "get" it. Do yourselves a favor and watch some old tokusatsu like Ultraman or Spectreman before you see this. That is the genre that this movie is spoofing, so you should at the very least have a LITTLE familiarity with it. Beyond that, you don't need to be a huge Japanophile to love this, as the humor is pretty universal. This movie definitely earned its spot in my top 25 favorite comedies.
|
|
|
7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Beware the Big Man Japan!, April 28, 2009
If you aren't fairly familiar with modern Japanese comedy then you are probably going to miss a lot of what "Big Man Japan" has to offer. For example, "Downtown" is not a name that is going to mean much to most Americans, but they are a phenomenal comedy-duo that are incredibly influential and whose style dominates much of modern Japanese comedy. Think Monty Python's Flying Circus, The Second City Theatre, or Saturday Night Live.
"Big Man Japan" (Japanese title "Dai-Nipponjin" or "Giant Japanese Person") is "Downtown" member Matsumoto Hitoshi's big screen debut as both a staring actor and a director. Much of the humor is in his trademark style, and he brought along plenty of famous friends for cameos, although noticeably missing is his "Downtown" partner Masatoshi Hamada.
The film is done in a mockumentary-style, following the life of slacker Daisatou Masaru who has inherited his power to grow to an enormous size from his father and his now-senile grandfather, both who previously served as "Big Man Japan." Masaru draws a government salary to protect Japan from the various Godzilla-like monsters that attack from time to time, but his heart isn't really in it. The public mocks him and complains about the property damage and environmental aspects of his battles. His manager sells advertising space on his giant body. Things just aren't going well.
Most of the first part of the film is just following Masaru around, looking in on his daily life, dingy apartment and how he looks after his senile grandfather. When duty calls, however, he swells up to battle the monster-of-the-week (many of whom are the aforementioned cameos of famous friends), sometimes managing to beat the monster away but sometimes getting it handed to him. The final sequence goes to even more left-field, as Big Man Japan gets to live his dream by joining the Ultraman squad, and all pretense of story goes out the window.
All of the monsters are CGI, and they are intentionally done in a cheesy manner. Like the bad special effects on shows like "Saturday Night Live," much of the humor comes from how terrible and unrealistic the special effects are, and from seeing famous comedians morphed into giant versions of themselves. Other than these big flashes, the humor is done in a deadpan-style, and it isn't a fast-paced movie until the final payoff in the end.
I really enjoyed "Big Man Japan," but I think this is because I lived over in Japan for several years and am a huge fan of "Downtown." Like the film Takeshis, which also was cameo-ridden, this just isn't something that was made for the overseas market, and I think if I was seeing it cold then I wouldn't have enjoyed it. Fans of pure absurdity will probably get a kick out of it, and people who enjoy a good man-in-suit giant monster movies like The Super Robot Red Baron and All Monsters Attack might find something good here too. Otherwise, it is probably going to be a snoozer for you.
|
|
|
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Question mark., September 8, 2009
Apparantly, I didn't get Big Man Japan. It's not a bad movie, it's just rather unclear to me what was trying to be achieved. Big Man is a quiet, sometimes touching, sometimes ridiculous movie, but it wasn't very funny, nor was it a giant monster movie, which I had expected it to be.
The closest reference I can think of is the movie Kairo / Pulse. Kairo looks like a horror movie on the outside, but it's more of an existential thing. It's not horror, unless one finds tedium and lonliness to be horrifying. Like Big Man, Kairo isn't a bad move, it's just a little too vague.
I especially didn't get the live action end of the movie. I do get that the movie tries to spoof the old giant monster tv shows like Ultraman or Space Giants. But I found the live footage jarringly inappropriate after such a thoughtful, introspective journey for the main character. If the entire movie, or at least the main battle scenes had been done in a similar over-the-top manner, the movie would've been really funny. On the other hand, if the end of the movie had remained true to itself, it would've made for a truly fascinating work.
As is turned out, Big Man felt not quite right.
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
DVD ~ Ayako Fujitani
DVD ~ Eric McCormack
DVD ~ Michael Rapaport
DVD ~ Oksana Akinshina
DVD ~ Karra Elejalde
