It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Blistering performances.

Being a fan of director/star Hitoshi Matsumoto's Symbol (2009) didn't truly prepare me for Big Man Japan. Watching any of his films is sure to give any casual viewer a case of cultural whiplash yet Big Man Japan is an entirely different beast. It's a film that in many ways is much more grounded in its themes, telling a very human tale of frustrated potential and quiet desperation. Yet visually Big Man Japan is so f***ing bizarre; uncomfortably mixing the monster destroys tiny models, Power Rangers (1993-1996) aesthetic, while using computer generated kaijus that can only be described as Giger- esque.Matsumoto plays Masaru Daisato, a lonely Japanese man in his early forties living in a decrepit house in Tokyo. Most days he stays at home avoiding the public, venturing out only when he's in the mood for his favorite super noodle shop. He has reason to be nonplussed, his ex- wife (Machida) has custody of his young daughter, the government gives him a measly pension to live on, and his agent (Ua) is finding increasingly contrived ways to get rich off of Masaru's good name. Oh yeah, I almost forgot, when the country is threatened by a city-sized kaiju, Masaru must run to the nearest power station, is electrocuted and is turned into Big Man Japan, Japan's twenty- stories tall protector. He's the latest in a long line of protectors and since the "glory days" of his grandfather(Yazaki), his presence is seen with a mix of ambivalence and hostility.Thematically, Big Man Japan acts as a counter-piece to the justifiably maligned Hancock (2008). The concept is pretty much the same but instead of a misanthropic Will Smith we get a quietly depressed giant and instead of an earnest against-type Jason Bateman we get Japanese popstar Ua constantly clacking away at her Nokia flip-phone. Yet here the overly complicated mythology sorta kind of works. Much of the history of the monsters are given via flashlight illuminated dossier which can be annoying, yet much of the inner logic of the film is left unexplained and inferred visually. This can either be seen as one of Big Man Japan's greatest assets or one of it's most jarring byproducts.Additionally other than the battle sequences between Big Man and the monsters, most of the story is told in a faux cinema verite style. This fly-on-the-wall objectivity let's Matsumoto to truly encapsulate the character in all his underplayed absurdity while giving most things emotional weight and resonance. Stories involving Masaru's overly ambitious father (Toriki) and his now senile grandfather fondly remembered as "The Fourth" prove especially disquieting.If only the battle sequences had the same effect. Despite being prominently featured in promotional materials, they almost appear to be lifted out of another movie entirely, functioning with different pacing and different instincts when it comes to humor. The modelling for downtown Tokyo and Nagoya prove chintzy and the monsters design make them resemble the Macarena baby put through Dr. Frankenstein experiments. Maybe with a bigger budget or a more efficient division of resources, these sequences could have been the nightmare-fuel Matsumoto intend them to be. As it stands, they're just kind of dull.Big Man Japan has all the makings of a cult film. Seeded with a very good high-concept, the flick is mindbogglingly bizarre, sporadically funny and a little more complex than most would give it credit for. Yet it's also repulsively alien in form and presentation guaranteeing that only the least discerning of American audiences will find something worth watching. Otherwise, apart from a hallucinogenic ending that channels the runaway ridiculousness of South Park (1997-Present), I'd just skip it and see something else.

After watching the trailer i really wanted to see Big Man Japan. However, it quickly turned out that i was a victim of advertising. Not that the best moments were used, but the only moments worth watching were in that trailer.Although i'm curious and ready to explore the Seventh Art, it was difficult to find anything that would attract my attention. The situation was even more sensible, since i talked in some people around me to watch the movie and had to explain that we're watching a comedy.In a way, i'm giving two stars to the trailer. The movie itself is not watchable.

Strangely paced, unflinchingly crazy and brow-furrowingly confusing, this is a tough movie to get a handle on. It's pseudo-documentary in the same style as Christopher Guest, but with a less obvious comedic timing, more humble, unassuming characters and a hefty injection of pure, unabashed Japanese absurdity. The camera's focal point is Masaru, a soft spoken middle-aged loser with a going-nowhere life and zero self confidence, who nonchalantly moonlights as the fifteen-story tall, nearly naked hero "Big Japanese Man." Despite saving the city from a series of rampaging monsters, public interest in his work is waning and he's beginning to find it difficult to make ends meet. Excruciatingly slow at points, it has a few interesting things to say about the longevity of the superheroic profession and the notoriously fickle nature of public favor, but much of that is lost beneath the burden of such a painfully dull lead character. Its dry, bizarre sense of humor hits the mark more often than not, and the CGI fight scenes make for quite the spectacle, but this really didn't need to be half as long as it is. Fans of the eccentricities of Japanese culture will have a ball with it, although they'll have to wade through some arid terrain to get to the good stuff. I'm still trying to figure out what exactly happened in the last scene.

Here in the good old Second-Depression-Era United States, moviegoers have very little to look forward to: we get gussied-up video games masquerading as movies (or cgi cartoons all geared to the Special Needs kids), or an endless series of killbilly murder movies that beget yet more killbilly murder movies (because they makes money, and money talks), or alleged comedies (or romances) that elicit only groans, or big-budget movies based on creatively-worthless television shows or... Let me catch my breath. Whew. Where I was...? Oh, yeah: let's all clasp our hands and bow our heads and thank Japan for movies like BIG MAN JAPAN. Although most of us will only experience these gems on video, that's a relatively small price to pay for being able to see them at all. I haven't laughed this hard since I saw Knob Zombie's killbilly classic, HOLLERWEEN TWO. Sato-san goes from a figurative zero (a "loser" on a superhero TV show) to sixty (feet) in a matter of minutes once electricity has been applied to various "points" on his body. (We see him standing naked inside a giant pair of trunks strung between what amounts to a pair of telephone poles, waiting to be jolted into gigantism. It's at once hysterical, yet practical: once the change is effected, he needs SOME kind of... costume...) His toe-to-toe slugfests with a wide variety of kaiju have to be seen to be appreciated (and he's not averse to trying to avoid conflict by talking a giant monster into leaving town). The abrupt change from state-of-the-art cgi to live-action scenes near the end is gut-bustingly funny: the cheesy foam rubber appliances hark back to the rubber-wear sported by so many BEMs (Bug-Eyed Monsters) in so many kaiju classics (from the original GOJIRA to ULTRAMAN- and beyond). We even see the strings that haul our hero(oes) away (who are, of course, doubled by what are clearly dolls). All of this reminded me of a double feature I saw as a kid: GODZILLA (sic) VS. THE SMOG MONSTER and WAR OF THE GARGANTUAS. At one point in one of these two movies (I don't remember which; they blur), a kaiju kicks a pile of toy cars out of his way. On the Big Screen, one could clearly read the name of the toy manufacturer on the bottom of one of the overturned vehicles: Tonka. BIG MAN JAPAN takes me back to them good ol' days, when movies was just plain fun. Domo arigato.