Dainipponjin, or 'Big Man Japan' is the tale of Masaru Daisatou, played by Hitoshi Matsumoto. He is "Big Man Japan" a man who, with the aid of our friend Electricity, can become a giant man to help protect mankind from various giant monsters.
Quick description below, taken from the link on the
Melbourne International Film Festival site:
"Dainipponjin has to be, hands down, the strangest picture in Cannes this year... [It is] tears-down-the-face funny and a genuine jaw-dropping oddity." - Variety
Stand-up comedian and actor Hitoshi Matsumoto adds ‘director' to his list of cred-entials with this absurd mockumentary about a mild-mannered man who turns into a mega-sized superhero whenever danger descends on Japan. Played by Matsumoto himself, this man is anything but super on a daily basis - his alter ego is buckling under the pressure of having to face-off with foes live on television while his viewer ratings continue to drop.
A guaranteed cult classic, Dainipponjin maintains its comedic freshness - among many head-scratching moments - from start to finish.
"Some films can be best described by the word ‘incomparable'." - International Film Festival Rotterdam
The film is a comedy presented in mostly documentary style with various monster fight scenes cut in.
Daisatou is a loser, who is generally fairly hated. His TV show, which broadcasts his fight, has flagging ratings, and generally he seems like a bit of a crappy hero to protect Japan. But he's all they've got, so when monster's strike, it's Big Man Japan to the rescue.
This film was boring in parts, pathetic in parts, but boy howdy is it pathetically funny in parts too!
The fight scenes are quite ridiculous, ranging from a 'hug monster' who has a terrible combover, to a monster that throws its eyeball at people, and falls asleep in dark places. Daisatou is generally a loser who doesn't seem to have any cares in the world, not many friends and most people really don't care about him or like him. Even his fights scenes 'suck' in people's eyes and most of the monsters he 'defeats' are dispatched in generally pathetic ways. Really, pathetic does seem to be the word that comes to mind when thinking of this film.
This film is certainly an odd one. For the most part the monster scenes are done in CGI, something which works quite well actually, considering how lowtech the rest of the film is. Most monsters actually have human faces, and coupled with the CGI makes for some oddly real yet unreal scenes.
By far the best surprise is the ending, which is a pathetically great pay off for the rest of the film. I could link to the youtube site of it, but it's much better once you've been put through the rest of the movie.
Overall I'd give it a 4 out of 5, purely based on it's ridiculousness. It is actually quite slow in parts, but you can't help but hang on for the monster scenes, which always seem to go shorter than you like, but are great fun. Though because of it's oddball nature this is very much a 'love it or hate it' film. It doesn't seem to leave a whole lot of room for anyone to fence sit.
TRAILER'D!
