Big Man Japan

Big Man Japan is one of the weirder films I've seen from Japan and anyone who's passingly familiar with Japanese cinema knows what a statement that is. Starring, written by, directed by and produced by one man comedy auteur Hitoshi Matusmoto, Big Man Japan tells the tale of Masaru Daisato also known as Big Man Japan, the giant 30 foot tall super hero that defends Japan from invading monsters in a similar vein to Ultraman and other Kaiju films.

The twist being that everything in Masaru's life, including his monster fighting, absolutely sucks and the people of Japan hate him and think he's terrible at his job.

That's a brilliant high concept but it's not really the film that Big Man Japan gives us, and partly that's why the film is so odd. It's not the subject matter, although stuff like a giant starfish/vagina monster that stinks is pretty oddball, but rather the tone. Big Man Japan is deadpan to the point that it seems sometimes to be actively taunting the audience with how unfunny it's being. Long sequences of the film are taken up with Masaru eating at a noodle place, driving his scooter, talking about how he likes umbrellas and doing other mundane tasks all filmed in a documentary style with minimal camera movement and subtle acting. It's actively boring at times but it seems to be intentional because the central gag is presenting the absurd and surreal monster battles in as deadpan and ordinary a way as the mundane aspects of Masaru's life. The long boring segments means the eventual pay off of a giant pair of purple pants seems all the funnier. Not that the documentary segments are without humour, particularly the scene with Masaru's daughter in her bunny hat and pixelated face, but it's a subtler humour than the giant electric nipples or enormous cat eared baby spouting poetry. Tolerance for this level of deadpan is likely to be low though so it's certainly not a film with wide appeal.

People have moaned about the special effects for this feature but frankly on the budget this film had, and especially considering they're using motion capture technology I think they look great and even add to the humour since, again they mix the oddball and the deadpan. Being able to see the actor's facial expressions is much more important than a good looking suit or smooth CGI when you're doing this kind of subtle comedy.

One final note, the last ten minutes of this film are absolutely hysterical. Having built up the threat of this unknown red monster with Masaru running away from it and finally having to face it again at the end we're all primed for a typical redemption story where Masaru overcomes his own incompetence and beats the big bad. I won't spoil the ending but suffice it to say the film undercuts this expected trope in the most ludicrous and hilarious manner possible. Much as individual scenes have a slow, tedious, excruciating, agonisingly, long build up to a gag so the film as a whole is 90 minutes of deadpan and 10 minutes of utter unrestrained insanity that had me laughing like a loon.

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Hitoshi Matsumoto's wonderfully deadpan "Big Man Japan" ("Dai-Nihonjin) is a brilliantly hilarious send up of Japan's giant monster movies of yesteryear. A postmodernist at heart, Matsumoto flips the genre conventions, grounding the beautifully weird world of "Big Man Japan" in reality through a dry mocumentary style that mixes interviews, archival footage and computer animated fight scenes with a razor's wit.

Masaru Daisato is the latest in a long legacy of men who grow to mammoth proportions when juiced with electricity. Masaru spends most of his time as a normal-sized human being, surviving on a meager government stipend in a grimy suburb of Tokyo. But when strange monsters attack (and believe me they are strange), Masaru is hooked up to a power plant and juiced with enough electricity to grow into a purple underweared giant.

Not that any of this endears Masaru to the citizens of Japan. The road to the power plant is plastered with signs critical of Masaru's actions and abilities. His house is covered in threatening graffiti and vandalized on a daily basis. Masaru is an outsider in a country of insiders, a colorful anachronism in increasingly bland times.

Perspective is a central theme in "Big Man Japan"'s giant monster weirdness. Does having the ability to turn into a giant and save the country from destructive building-stomping monsters make you a hero or a freak? It all depends on who you ask.

There's no doubt that Masaru is a loser. When not attacking giant monsters with a large pipe, Masaru sits in his graffiti-covered home eating dehydrated seaweed ("It only grows big when you need it.") while neighbors throw bricks through his windows. Masaru's wife and daughter have left him, photos are all that remains of his profession's illustrious past and his show routinely earns less ratings than the weather report. No one ever said it was easy being big.

And perhaps this is the biggest joke in Matsumoto's wonderfully awkward film. Godzilla eventually became a friend of the children, saving Japan from countless invading monsters, but he was always a foreigner. Godzilla called Monster Island home, not the gray slums of Tokyo. Ultraman was from outer space not Osaka. This is an important difference. Forced to live among the very people he fights to protect, Masaru became the biggest oddity in a hegemonic society based on Confucian values.

The world of "Big Man Japan" is one of dashed hopes and squandered potential, a world where Masaru's senile grandfather, made so by repeated exposure to high levels of electricity, zaps himself giant and wanders through the city. And the monsters, as outrageously weird as they may be, never actually seem threatening in any way.

Instead, the creatures, with their comb-overs, phallic eyes and sexual perversions seem as oblivious as children that their actions do any harm. Masaru dispatches the beasts by clubbing them once in the head, not through a long drawn out fight, and their souls ascend to heaven in a campy 8-bit video game fashion.

And by the end, when Matsumoto drops the mocumentary cameras and the computer animation for a ridiculous symbolism-heavy homage to cheesy rubber suits and miniature sets fare like "Ultraman" it hardly makes sense but is hilarious nonetheless. I would've preferred "Big Man Japan" didn't end with an allegory about Japan-China relations and the reliance on the American military for protection filtered through campy 1970s kaiju sensibilities but what the hell, it was one crazy ride.

Taken from http://www.midnighttrash.net/?p=677 MidnightTrash.net: Your guide to everything under the radar.

Matsumoto is a member of comedy duo Down Town, he's a No.1 comedian in Japan present. His vision is very surreal and it makes him so special. I'm a huge fan myself, however I'm not so happy about Dai Nippon Jin. I recommend his early works like Visualbum series, To-Zu or Hitori-Gottsu series instead. Those are more fun and lyrical, overall it's unique.

I'd say he should work with his friends together again like in his early days. Though, I know they are all big now, there's some problem working together. But it's my dream that Matsumoto working with Mr. Itao full time making a picture together. It should be a great surreal comedy flick.

Actually, Itao appearing few minutes as smelly monster in this film. I always laugh my head off seeing that, but it's not enough, cos considering their talent, they can do more than that.

Maybe Matsumoto's weak point is working with strangers and that huge budget. Probably, big budget gave him big pressure mentally, and couldn't concentrate. his talent will definitely explode when solving those problems. Working with his close friends, making it with low budget. I'm expecting his next work.

I'm embarrased to admit I avoided this film for years, despite its appearance in several curated movie collections, because it looked rather bad. Fortunately I finally caved after watching other Matsumoto films that were creative, hilarious, sad and unique, with deeper layers beyond their insanity as to never succumb to being weird for weirdness sake alone.

Dai-Nihonjin shares all these strengths with the dryness levels on the humour-knob turned up to severe skin-chafing levels. This will put off many viewers not familiar with this style of japanese comedy best exemplified by the cult director SABU's filmography.

As a deconstruction of tropes this is a rather genius work of art. The faux-documentary style enhances the absurdity of the situations and at the same time gives real weight to the plight of the hero, the eponymous Dainihonjin. Turns out having to be a hero sucks, it destroys your life, nobody likes you and maybe you're only making things worse for everyone.

A lot of what makes this movie so charming is the intentionally bad CGI for the creatures that are somehow both hilarious and oddly terrifying. It reminded me of the bizarre existentialist Dreamcast game Seaman which is always appreciated. There are so many clever elements here that are always glossed over in other movies or comics like this. Just how do you solve the whole underwear problem when you grow from human to giant size and back?

Beneath the comedy there is some genuinely smart commentary on the media, society and strangely enough international relations of Japan to its neighbors. While this is presented in a rather understated and subtle manner, being played straight thoughout, it all eventually erupts like a comedy volcano in the final ten minutes and just totally bludgeons you over the head. I can't remember the last time I've laughed this hard. I was in actual pain.

This is a hard film to recommend to more mainstream audiences but it's so genuine, creative and hilarious that it deserves more viewers.

I got a chance to see this at the Toronto International Film Festival, and I found this to be a quite refreshing and one of the more original films I've seen in the past little while.

A brief synopsis, is that a documentary film crew follows a mid-age slacker who basically has nothing going for him in life... but what's odd is he has the power to grow to the size of a building and fight monsters ("baddies").

The comedy during the interviews and daily life of Dai is very subtle. There is no music track and his facial expression are very mute. The monster scenes are hilarious, and the last 10 minutes made me laugh so hard.

If you are very open minded with comedy, this is for you, but don't expect a typical giant monster movie.