The World Sinks Except Japan (2006)

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

Well well, It seems most reviewers here just don't get it...Having lived in Japan for 3 years, I can tell you that what Minoru Kawasaki is courageously trying to do is what Americans would need in order to get back a vital minimum of self-criticism toward their own issues with nationalism...This is a major political statement typical from a new generation of Japanese artist who are trying to shake things up a bit.Brilliant stuff if you do have a second degree of understanding things. Otherwise, well, just watch the parodied movie "japan sinks",utter rubbish that came out the same year with about 2000% of the budget and think for yourself, if you can.

This movie look like a pathetic nationalist wet dream. It's like if the black van driving crowd got drunk and made a movie about Japanese superiority. The usual Z-Team of foreigner-clown of the Japanese TV are here. Even the god-awful Dave Spector felt obliged to be part of this bowel-movement level of a movie. It's the standard crap, foreigners commit all the crimes, if you let them in you will get robbed everyday, only the Japanese a worthy people, only Japanese housewife know how to cook, foreign women are pantie sniffing slackers... In most of the first world countries there's laws against these kind of xenophobic propaganda.

Seriously this is supposed to be a parody of the sinking of japan. Well parodies are supposed to be funny and this sure as hell wasn't. The steriotypes were not funny and at times either mind numbingly stupid or just plain offensive. The story and plot if their is even supposed to be one, was hardly followed through and when it was over i was left pondering if the director really wanted this to be a parody or just some dumb drama flick, with dumb special effects and even dumber acting And i'm still wondering who the hell some of these no name actors who played the foreigners came from, since I've never seen them before in any movie till now. I hope this doesn't become a trend now in Japanese cinema where they have to rely on cheesy special effects and no actual story to make their films watchable. Its not working to well for Hollywood after all. Oh yeah and i absolutely despised the Japanese nationalism in this flick. Maybe they weren't taking it seriously in japan, but i think to a lot of non Japanese your gonna be very offended by some of the things they say and do to the foreign refugees in this film. Personally i think japan is setting itself up to be hated with films like these.Overall an incredible waste of time to watch.

Let's get the bottom line out of the way first: Nihon Igai Zenbu Chinbotsu isn't funny. Given the fame and high profile of the film this is parodying, it is a brilliant idea with huge comic potential. Tragically, the execution fails to mine even a fraction of that potential. I smiled at the "gaijin report," weather forecast-style reporting of gaijin 'fronts' around the country. The Chinese and Korean leaders reduced to vaudeville performing sidekicks of the Japanese PM was mildly amusing - ditto their revenge at the end of the film. I came to the film expecting outrageous laugh-out-loud moments but barely managed a titter. In a film like this, we expect the low production value, cheesy effects, ham-fisted acting and nondescript casting. We put up with them in the hope that all the effort has gone into the script. Admirably, the film takes pot-shots at both gaijin and Japanese pretensions. Unfortunately, at the risk of repeating myself, it just isn't funny. In fact, most of the time it is downright boring. All in all, a missed opportunity.