Cutie Honey

I saw this film at the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal, right after Blueberry. Holy smokes, this movie is totally awesome!!! Why can't north Americans make cool movies like this? It's super happy and action-packed, and it even makes fun of itself = it's perfect!!! For this vein of movies, Cutie Honey is the best I've ever seen!!!

If you have a vague idea what this movie is about, you'll be blown away by the extremes and humour presented on the screen. It's not serious. But a most excellent treat indeed!

All the acting is superficial, there's a constant(but not tumultuous) music track throughout, all the photography is extreme and the story itself is completely retarded. A lot of the humor comes from making fun of stupid little "cutesy" movies --> also, the sexism is exaggerated too: Cutie Honey behaves in a ... "special" way: always innocently making sexy poses wearing only underwear, etc... All the action sequences are completely over the top, super loud, and mixed with cartoons as well.

For what it is, it's unbeatable.

Let's put it clear from the beginning, the film is an exercise in style, and the style is anime. If you like anime, this is THE FILM you'd love to see, characters, timing, acting, dialog, cameras, lights, sound...An fan's dream, a film made by a man who loves anime for all the people who love anime. When I found that Anno, the man who made Neon Genesis Evangelion, was in this project, I thought it would be great. When I finally saw it, I found it was better, I kept a smile all time long. If you don't like it, well, try something else. If you don't like blues, you'd protest about repetitive riffs and metrics, long guitar solos and so on. Each kind of art has its codes, and if you share them you understand and appreciate it. For me, this is a masterpiece of live action anime.

Saw Cutie Honey at the Leeds Film Festival on Saturday... not sure if James Maruyuma had been paying attention until the last half of the movie, because people breaking into song for no particular reason and "metaphysical" (actually psycho-sociological but nevermind) thoughts about love and opening your heart to people are there throughout. The film is 95% very very very silly, with a couple of curveball moments where things get a bit more serious, then right back into silliness and fluffiness again. The film is shot and edited in a very anime-esque way, with extensive use of CG to enhance the stylisation and "cartooniness" that's already quite abundant from the costumes and overacting. In fact, so much effort has been spent making the live action film feel like an animated film that one sometimes wonders why they didn't just animate it ;) The answer is, of course, the super-cuteness of Sato Eriko (though I was actually more partial to Ichikawa Mikako's super-repressed detective character, make of it what you will).

Overall, very very camp and silly fun with a fluffy message about the power of love n' stuff. Not the stuff classics are made of, but worth seeing if the opportunity arises.

And I agree with the other reviewer, i think James totally missed the point! The idea as far as I can tell was to make a live action anime, it was a parody not a serious movie. The way the characters are posed, in particular the journalist, and one scene where a character has a megaphone covering her mouth was a nod to the way animation is shot-ie exaggerated poses, and objects over mouths to save on animation costs.It was supposed to be a large poke of fun at the silliness of magic girl anime series and anime standards, like a live action version of excel saga! I enjoyed it greatly, and laughed the whole way through, i suppose if you have seen the original series its difficult not to get precious about it. But for someone who has watched a lot of anime, it was enjoyable for all the references to other series and the way a master of the medium can poke fun at his own creations.The performances were good and in a way perfectly studied, they all acted like anime characters, which was the point, Anno was having a dig at how simplistic a lot of characters in anime are and in particular female characters. I agree the end with Sister Jill was a bit sappy but again i thought he was trying to make a point about soppy endings to anime series, as well as obviously trying to fill his need to have some comment on human nature in all his productions! All in all a highly enjoyable film!

I have to go with the other posters. This was the most amazing and revolutionary action-adventure I have seen since "Road Warrior" way back when! Yes, maybe I sound like a nut after saying that, but the energy from the Fantasia Festival debut of this movie has convinced that I am not insane after all. "Cutie Honey" (the most unlikely action-film title I ever heard or could imagine) deserves to go down in film history as one of the greatest action-adventures of all time. For instance it's 10X better than the Lethal Weapon series, and Quentin Tarantino only wishes he had the talent to create a film like this (rather than steal it).

Then again, since "Hollywood" denigrates films like this? I am not sure what its fate will be. But if it got a US release it could revolutionize the US film industry like nothing people have seen. In the meantime I only hope anyone reading this has a chance to see this amazing film.

It's that F'N good.,