DAINIPPONJIN (aka BIG MAN JAPAN) (Japan, 2007)
Directed by: Hitoshi Matsumoto
Starring: Hitoshi Matsumoto, Riki Takeuchi, Ua
“Midnight madness doesn't begin to describe this strange Japanese import.”
- Austin Chronicle

Dai-Sato (Hitoshi Matsumoto) is a longhaired loser in his 40’s, who lives alone in the kind of cluttered house that middle-aged men move into after their first divorce. He wanders aimlessly around town, picking up groceries, rambling on about umbrellas, eating lunch alone and hanging out in the local park while kvetching about the low wage he makes at his government job. For the first 20 minutes of this mockumentary we have no idea why the cameras are following him around, or what the interviewer could possibly want to know about his drab, water-stained life. And then the call comes, he heads to the nearest power station and after 20,000 watts are pumped through his nipples he swells to enormous size, a five-hundred foot tall superhero, the protector of Japan, the man who fights giant monsters in his purple underwear: Dainipponjin!!!! There’s the Strangling Monster with its eerie comb-over; the happy-go-lucky Leaping Monster; the Stink Monster, who emits an odor equivalent to 10,000 human feces and the eyeball-hurling Evil Stare Monster. And wherever they appear to wreak havoc (or to mate, when they’re in heat) there is Dainipponjin, the Big Man Japan, ready to beat them over the head with an enormous stick.

Combining the lunacy of a WWE smackdown with the deadpan of THIS IS SPINAL TAP, rarely has a comedy been this patient in setting up its audience. This flick spends the first hour building the world of Dainipponjin, then it spends the next hour hilariously destroying it. Dai-Sato is the fifth generation of giant Japanese superheroes, and the good times are all in the past. His manager (pop singer, Ua) is practical to a fault, seeing his heroism as nothing more than a marketing tool and giant monsters as potential billboards – anything to pay the bills incurred by a guy who grows over 500 feet tall. Japan hates him for the way he messes up their neighborhoods and for being such an unfashionable, old school throwback. The population regards him the same way we regard Britney Spears (“Not as edgy as he used to be,” “He got fat,” “He’s not so interesting anymore.”) When he’s attacked and beaten by a North Korean Devil Monster the ratings on his reality TV show (which has been banished to the 2 AM slot due to low ratings) go sky-high because the whole country wants to see him humiliated. Even the documentary crew filming this movie wish he’d do something more exciting or step up his performance for the camera. 

Television comedian, and mega-celebrity Hitoshi Matsumoto is best known as a member of the comedy team, Downtown, and he and his partner are two of the highest-paid entertainers in Japan. Imagine Jerry Seinfeld crossed with Woody Allen to get an idea of his popularity. DAINIPPONJIN, which Matsumoto wrote and directed as well as starred in, was selected to go to Cannes as part of “Director’s Fortnight” and it took Matsumoto five years to write and one year to shoot.  But it’s his performance as the halting, shy Dai-Sato, constantly beset on all sides by troubles he can barely comprehend, that makes this movie sing and give audiences an idea of his talent.

Unfolding slowly and constantly opening up trap doors to drop us into a deeper level of bizarre, and full of more genuine laughs than a production of Rain Man cast entirely with chimps, DAINIPPONJIN climaxes with a guest appearance by America’s number one superhero, Super Justice (and Super Justice’s Mom, Super Justice’s Dad and Super Justice’s baby) sending audiences out into the night with humor depth charges planted deep inside their brains that will wake them up in the middle of the night, three days later, laughing uncontrollably.