YATTERMAN (Japan, 2009)
Directed by: Takashi Miike
Starring: Sho Sakurai, Saki Fukuda, Chiaki Takahashi, Kyoko Fukada

The economy is on fire. Everyone in America is broke. There are no more jobs and the terrorists are winning. But if you see YATTERMAN you're going to be feeling groovy. A vaccination against the Current Event Blues, a massive day-glo rail of cocaine that hits your brain like the Accela Express and kick starts your pleasure centers, this flick is far smarter than it has any right to be and it pops the pip all over your popple.

The original Yatterman was a goofy 70's television anime considered slightly risque and trashy for the times. Every week, toy shop owner, Gan (Sho Sakurai) and his cute assistance, Ai, battled the evil and incompetent Doronbo gang led by femme fatale, Doronjo, and her assistants: pig-nosed muscle man Tonzra and rat-faced mecha genius Boyacky. Everyone talks in cute phrases (Toy-Botty ends his sentences with "-botty," while evil Skull Obey ends his with "-obey") and the mecha are nuts: clunky Yatter-wan (or Yatter-woof) is a giant mechanical dog whose powers seem to entirely consist of rolling around very fast, there's a Yatter-panda, a Yatter-pelican. Every week, like clockwork, Yatterman and the Doronbo gang battle for piece of the mystical skull stone, every week the Doronbo gang fail (usually due to incompetence), there's a mushroom cloud, Gan and Ai do their Yatterman dance and they all come back the following week to do it all over again.

Miike takes this basic idea and injects a heaping helping of self-awareness. The Doronbo Gang are tired of getting beaten up every week, Gan is a bit of a dolt, bystanders watch he and Ai break into their Yatterman victory dance and mutter, "These people are crazy." Yatter-wan gets beaten up more often than he wins, and mushroom clouds bloom like there's just been a heavy nuclear rain. The heart of the movie, however, is Doronjo. Played by Kyoko Fukada, the sugar princess from KAMIKAZE GIRLS, she's a preening, prancing, pretty pony princess who just loves to be evil because, well, she's a genius. What else is she going to do? She brings adult shading to her cartoon character and maintains her essential humanity no matter what kind of onscreen indignity is being visited upon her.

This flick is kid friendly, but it's a Miike movie through and through, delivering more "I can't believe I just saw that," moments per minute than any other movie out there today. This is the movie that people tricked themselves into thinking they were watching when they raved about SPEED RACER (and at an hour and fifty minutes it's mercifully shorter). Projected in HD, watching Yatterman is like getting Candyland poured in your eyes. Attack sushi, the Funny Bunny Club, a battle, a pile of all the schoolgirls in Japan...Yatterman offers up something shiny, new and nutty in every frame. Miike's idea-cup is more than overflowing - in YATTERMAN it's practically a geyser.