More a ramshackle collection of setpieces and approximation than a fully organize flick , Big Man Japan is instead funny , touching , and stupefy . Though not an unqualified achiever , it ’s hard to detest something so gleefully bizarre .
A failure , albeit a loveable one , he spends most of his meter drinking , looking after both his doddering gramps and a stray computed axial tomography , and making momentary attempts to reconnect with his estranged wife and eight - year - old daughter . At times , the picture show almost feels like The Wrestler with Nipponese superheroes , and there ’s some genuine commiseration in the fiber ’s fumbling drive to do the ripe thing , even when he clear has no natural aptitude for the chore . As much as he might basically be a near guy cable , he still manages to unexpectedly shoot down both a shaver and an erstwhile man while in his giant form . The film brilliantly acknowledges the sort of public uproar this would cause , as the ab initio silly CGI deaths grow into the focus of mass indignation .
Big Man Japan makes undecomposed economic consumption of the mockumentary format . The unobserved interviewer very much becomes a character in his own right , forcing characters to redo scenes so he can get better blastoff and prick the Big Man into agitate a clearly superior foe . Only the monster conflict prospect drop this approach , and even they become increasingly ridiculous . The CGI is intentionally bad , providing a twenty-first hundred replication to the fifties monster pic it emulates .
As much as all of these idea are challenging ( and I have n’t even mentioned the giant fart monster sex or all the clobber with the nipples ) , they never quite add up to a cohesive whole . The movie tackles about twenty unlike themes , include family traditions , the role of the camera , the fickle populace , and the peril of corporatism . A lot is said about all of them , but none of them are ever quite developed completely . The stark shifts in tone between the documentary and monster movie segments prove a little too jarring , as each serve to hurt the suspension of disbelief I had built up for the other . The flick ’s termination is unspeakably absurd , and it ’s hard to see how exactly it fits in with anything else the film is attempt to say . It might make more sense if I jazz more about the complexness of Nipponese pop culture , but I found the ending deep unsatisfying .
Ultimately , however , both the movie ’s succeeder ( which are many ) and failures ( which are few ) number from the same space : Hitoshi Matsumoto ’s dizzying willingness to take risks . This is not a cinema that is ever guilty of underreaching , and it is easy to forgive the misfires of a film so ludicrously challenging . bounteous Man Japan is not pure , but it ’s hard to envisage a film more delightful in its weirdness .
New York Comic Con
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