3 out of 5

Directed by: Takashi Miike

I’ve been saying this a lot lately, but: no idea.  Based on a classic anime series from the late 70s (and re-pitched in the 2000s), Yatterman is sound and fury with an eyebrow-raising dose of Miike sex humor that I’m guessing / hoping the kids won’t get, including – I shit you not – two robots humping and one, bared “titty guns” jiggling, climaxing with an English utterance of “I’m coming.”  It was hard to figure out if I was actually seeing this; it was harder to suss out whether or not these scenes worked or hurt the film.

Setting that aside, the clearest understanding of what you’re witnessing here comes from Miike’s explanation in the short interview extra on the DVD: it’s the original, it just happens to be done with actors and sets.  Meaning that it’s not Takashi’s hope to “reimagine” this for the real world, but rather to just make it like it’s a cartoon.  As such, a lot of the incredible oddities that occur aren’t the filmmaker’s additions, but rather elements ripped straight from the show.  Where he does take liberties (besides the content mentioned above) is with a ton of well-done nods to how this stuff doesn’t actually work in real life, such as the actors clearly appearing out of breath when “posing” for the camera or, in a particularly cheeky scene, becoming physically exhausted and bored as they ride their mecha-machine around the world to the bad guy’s lair.  These moments are sprinkled liberally throughout, but are done without the forceful winking that one would imagine an American attempt of something like this would entail, so they sit alongside the full-on-anime action sequences without any visible seams stitching them together.  And on the whole, this makes for a wacky, enjoyable experience, with Miike taking advantage of his status as a blockbuster filmmaker at this point to go all out with insane sets and props.  (Which doesn’t stop there being an insane amount of CGI to up the crazy ante, though.)

So back to all the sex stuff: the film is definitely a bit long for my tastes, at 110 minutes, and while part of that is due to the movie cramming in a lot of references to the original content – including the gag that these battles and setups repeat and repeat, so it’s sort of like we’re watching 2 or 3 “episodes” back to back – that robot humping scene added at least five minutes, and similarly lingering shots elsewhere added padding as well.  Since I wouldn’t quite consider this “intelligent” boundary pushing, and as there was already plenty of innuendo and visual gags that work more for adults than kids, I’m leaning toward the movie being dragged down by having this stuff in there.  (Although perhaps it’s worth the price of admission for the initial WTF value… just not so much for making a solid final product.)

Dot dot dot, the plot is about heroes versus villains.  ‘Kay?  Yatta Yatta Yatterman, y’all.