Yatterman (2009)

just watch it!

Gripping story with well-crafted characters

I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

So the challenge is to make a full length live action movie from an anime series which did not stray too far from "Dudly Do-Right" in scope.One way, and this is what director Miike chooses, is to keep the visuals and story at the original "Loony-Tunes" level, but make the characters and subtext more adult. This will either work for you, or leave you aghast, depending on if you expected a kids movie or not.It's obvious from the opening shot of Doronjo where Miike is headed with this movie. It's a kids movie for adults, not to be confused with a kids movie with jokes thrown in for adults. I enjoyed it.Kyoko Fukada as Doronjo is hot enough to burn celluloid; the rest of the Dorombo gang is well cast, too. The Yatterman side is weaker, but probably deliberately so. The running gag of the movie is that the Dorombo gang must always lose, this is funnier if the good guys don't really seem to be worthy opponents.There is a lot of CG animation in this movie, and while it's well done for the most part, the extended CG fight scenes get less and less interesting as the film rolls on into the second half.

Gan and Ai (who together are Yatterman) battle Mistress Donjuro and her fiendish assistants Tonzra and Boyacki for pieces of an ancient skull. In the hands of someone other than Takashi Miike this would be a conventional adventure thriller with car chases,snappy one-liners, explosions and a love interest. However this is Takashi Miike. He pokes a finger in the eye of your pre-conceived ideas, flicks v-signs at the standard film conventions while dancing on the seat of a unicycle. Naked.On Fire. And upside-down.If Luis Bunel and Dali dropped acid and spent the weekend drinking Absinthe and eating crayons this is the kind of madness that would ensue. This is huge spoiler for the opening, just to give you a flavour for what the film is like:***Spoiler***We open to a scene of devastation, a huge teddy-bear robot is rampaging though Tokoyoko armed with a frying pan and cleaver. They are confronted by Yattaman and a fight ensues, which has people climbing out of what appears to be deep-fat fryers, fighting with giant spoons and forks versus someone armed with a a ball and cup, throwing cars at each other, kung-fu moves, more robots, a cute Japanese woman dressed as a leather- clad dominatrix, electrocutions, slapstick, a soundtrack that sounds like a mixture of bad 80s pop and German power metal guitar, then followed by a battle between a robo-dog and the original teddy-bear kitchen utensils robot, the losers make their escape on a bicycle that talks to them and throws them off by exploding the saddles as punishment... and that is just the the first 10 minutes.I've no idea if this is true to the original cartoon series and to be honest I don't care - it is well done, funny, appeals to both the adult and 5-year-old in me and very entertaining.

This movie is based on the Japanese comic whose name is same the movie. It includes many genres which are action, comedy, and romance a little. The basic story is a conflict between the hero of this story, Yatterman, and the notorious group of thieves, Doronbo. In this film, they fight over mysterious treasure Scull Stone. The treasure is said that it grant any one's wish if he or she get all tips of the stone which there are all over the world. Doronbo aims at getting the treasure, so that Yatterman chase them to save it. Through chasing, Doronjo as the leader of Doronbo carelessly falls in love to Yatterman.I'm sure that this original comic has been famous and popular. It is also true the casts are famous and magnificent. for example, Sho Sakurai as Yatterman, Kyoko Fukada as Doronjo, and so on. you could enjoy seeing this movie if you like the casts in this film or this kind of comedy. But I'd not like to give more than 6 stars for this movie. This movie includes some bad expressions. Moreover, casts' acts are childish and nonsense a little. I don't recommend having small children watch it.

Yatterman is one of those films that is best appreciated by fans of the very funny animated television series. I can't give it more than a six for that reason, but I happen to be one of the show's veteran fans and would rate it much higher at a Yatter-convention. The story is about Gan Takada, a mechanically-inclined boy and Ai Kaminari, his cute cohort who, in the original 1977 television series and its 2008 reprise, do weekly battle against the forces of evil--namely a woman named Doronjo and her two male cohorts, Boyacky and Tonzler. Behind the scenes on the evil side, there's an unseen character named Dokurobe who sends the trio through time and space on a quest for items which, if assembled, will allow him his dream of ultimate power. Each side pits a humorous array of robots and mechanisms against each other. Besides the obvious improvements in animation technology over the last thirty years, there are other differences between the two series. Gan is lazier in the new series, Ai is more possessive, and Doronjo's outfit is sexier. However, I still prefer the original series--and I'm not alone. Doronjo is the main difference. She was a much more likable character in the '70s version--and I have to admit she was one of the draws that kept me coming back to the TV every week. Takashi Miike did his best to follow the original series and, in doing so, kept the target demographic in the teen to adult range. Miike made Donojo a very likable character--and the drop-dead gorgeous Kyoko Fukada fills that character--and (you've got to see it to believe it) costume--very well. Miike also restored Boyacky to a pathetic genius with an unrequited crush on a Doronjo who plays him like a fiddle. He also restored Gan to status of willing hero and lowered Ai's maintenance level a notch. He also restored the '70s Yatter-policy of not providing real names of people or places. In this movie, for example, they travel to Ogypt and the Southern Halps. All in all, it's a fun movie and is worth seeing if it passes through your town or your video rental store.