Big Man Japan (2007)

This movie starts off like a documentary following around a man named Masaru Daisatô as he goes about his life.  Masaru is separated from his wife and doesn’t get to see his daughter as often as he would like.  He also doesn’t make as much money as he would like to.  Oh he also uses electricity to grow into a giant called Big Man Japan to do battle with the monsters that threaten his country.  The only thing is he really isn’t terrible good at his job and when he runs away from a monster (hinted to be made in North Korea) the ratings for his show drop dramatically.  Because you know he has an agent and a show that markets him.  This is a strange little movie. 

For those not familiar with the sort of movie that this is parodying they are called Kaiju.  You know the kinds that use the giant foam monsters to smash up cardboard replicas of cities.  Well Big Man Japan tries to tap into this kind of story with the main character, as much of the movie consists of him fighting various monsters that have all their strengths and weaknesses explained right before the fight.  The rest of the movie is a film crew following Masaru around showing the audience how pitiful and sad his life his.  For me the movie works best when we are watching Big Man Japan run around fighting creatures, which again is a good bit of the movie.  The stuff trying to explain his history and life gets really slow really fast, which makes some of the movie hard to get thru.  The best bit of the movie is the ending where things go “live”.  It doesn’t really make any sense, but I was laughing my butt off. 

There isn’t any gore in this movie, but then Big Man Japan isn’t that kind of movie.  There is a ton of CGI used to create the Kaiju scenes, rather than using the traditional rubber suits and doomed cardboard metropolises.  As a fan of these old monster movies I was a bit disappointed, but then I saw how they decided to end the movie and without spoiling anything it did put a smile on my face.  In the end in spite of some of the CGI being pretty bad I did enjoy all the goofy monster mayhem that the movie does treat you to.

In the end I will say this is a decent movie, but it comes with a caveat.  Unless you are a fan of the Japanese Kaiju flicks you probably aren’t going to enjoy Big Man Japan that much.  Most of the humor and fun comes from a shared interest and enjoyment of that kind of movie.  Without that you are just left with some mediocre and uninteresting documentary stuff.  So with that caveat I will say that Big Man Japan is worth checking out.  For more information head on over to the Magnet website for more information here at http://www.magnetreleasing.com/index.html

2 ½ out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer

© Copyright 2009 John Shatzer