DVD Review: Big Man Japan: Riki Takeuchi, Hitoshi Matsumoto: Movies & TV

Jul29

DVD Review: Big Man Japan: Riki Takeuchi, Hitoshi Matsumoto: Movies & TV

Posted by admin | on 29 July, 01:21 PM

Product Description
BIG MAN JAPAN is an outrageous portrayal of an original superhero. As Big Man Japan, Daisato inherited the role of defending Japan against a host of bizarre monsters. He receives high-voltage electroshocks which transform him into a stocky, stick-wielding giant several stories high.
However, where his predecessors were revered as national heroes, he is an outcast among the citizens he protects.

Beware the Big Man Japan!,

By Zack Davisson “All Good Things” (Seattle, WA, USA) -
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)

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.

Effing Hilarious,

By Burgess Smith (Chicago, IL) -

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.

This movie is a friggin blast,

By B. Lorentson (Tampa, FL) -

I saw this film back in 2007 as a secret screening as Fantastic Fest in Austin, Tx. I’ve been wanting to rewatch this film for some time now simply because I haven’t seen anything since that has given me such a WTF good time. This is something you should go in with as little knowledge of as possible, the audience I watched this with as well as myself found it hard to make it through the first 20 or so minutes of this film because its pacing is just not meant for a midnight movie audience…But it’s after this 20-25 minute marker when you discover what this movie is about and damn if it isn’t worth the wait. The fight scenes are simply over the top and a delight, each one being memorable in their own way, him vs his grandpa is fun for sure, and a flashback sequence to our hero as a kid and jumper cables on the nipples…Friggin classic. It’s something to be watched with friends with either a drink or bong in hand and in my humble opinion this will find its audience and work its way to being a cult classic.
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