vf-19excalibur

If you've never seen Crouching Tiger, Matrix, Highlander, Mortal Kombat, various hong kong kung-fu flicks, various action anime titles or John Woo movies, you MIGHT think this is a good movie. The problem is that this movie borrows practically everything from something else but doesn't execute it properly. The fight scenes are sometimes shown in bad slow motion. Bad meaning, it's very choppy video, all the wrong camera angles and usually used during inappropriate times. Thinking back, the fights have to be in slow motion due to their length. If the fight was shown at normal speed, you could drop the remote, pick it up and look up and the fight is over. I understand these are actors pretending to be martial artists, but they could have used a couple more months training, except for Byron Mann, who is so underused in this movie. I mean, here is a real martial artist and he isn't given the chance to strut his stuff. The villain is far too over the top. Again, it's like people mixed in various good villain traits and got the worst possible combination. He alone drags this terrible movie farther down the depths of mediocrity. All the film trailers made the movie to look better than it was. I kept watching, hoping it would get better, but it didn't.

Oji Tanaka's life sucks. He hates his job, his wife has just thrown away his most prized guitar and his son is using his old records as Frisbees. It all changes when Layla steps into his life. She asks him to take her into heaven. A loaded comment when you consider her figures, but it turns out she's an alien that needs him to play music to win an intergalactic war.

I first saw this series on Bandai's Wanted 2000 trailers disc and was curious; due to the visuals (strange opening sequence) and the great song playing. The series itself is funny and has a lot of heart. Through everything that happens, Oji finds himself again and has a different outlook on life.