Review: 'Big Man Japan'
G. Allen Johnson, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, May 29, 2009
SNOOZING VIEWER LMAN4
Comedy. Starring Hitoshi Matsumoto, Riki Takeuchi, Ua. Directed by Matsumoto. (PG-13. 103 minutes. At the Opera Plaza in San Francisco and the Shattuck in Berkeley.)
The concept of the comedy "Big Man Japan" is simple enough - superheroes are people too, with pets, messy houses and failed relationships.
But the film written, directed and starring stand-up comic Hitoshi Matsumoto has, like most superheroes, a tragic flaw: It isn't funny.
In fact, it's quite dull. Most of the movie consists of Daisato (Matsumoto) sitting - yes, sitting; hardly visually interesting - at desks, restaurant tables and park benches talking about his life and his alter-ego. It's done in mockumentary style, with an unseen filmmaker asking questions, and Daisato occasionally going, "turn the camera off."
It's now time, folks, to stop making mockumentaries. What a tired approach.
Anyway, when monsters attack Tokyo, Daisato takes a huge jolt of electricity, swells to enormous skyscraper-size and becomes the title character, a bizarre, tattooed, shock-haired hero who looks amusingly like a cross between a sumo wrestler and that funny-haired guy of Kid 'n Play.
His agent sells advertising space on his expanding chest, and tells him when he fights, "don't cross your arms so much; the sponsors don't like it."
The monsters are ridiculous riffs on the old Toho monsters of the '60s; Matsumoto's creations are creatures such as the Staring Monster, with an enormous eye used as a weapon; and the Stink Monster, and we'll leave that to your imagination.
The effects are cheap and cheesy, like it was made by a sixth-grader on a Mac, and in some quarters that would be a compliment.
It's possible that some of the humor just doesn't translate, but nevertheless the fact remains: "Big Man Japan" has about 15 minutes worth of monster mashing and 90 minutes of lousy mockumentary navel-gazing, never a good thing.
-- Advisory: Gross, disfigured, slimy computer-generated monsters.