Yatterman

Colour, 35 mm
Japan, 2008, 111 min
Section: Midnight Screenings

Synopsis

Opulent adventure, garish colors, exhilarating antics, and gigantic robots with phallic contraptions and huge nipples – quite simply, the ultimate family film from Japan. The comic book-styled narration takes place in a timeless space in which childhood meets adolescence, although the overarching principle remains open-minded exuberance. The movie sets in motion a naïvely joyful cycle of megalomaniacal construction and total destruction in which a three-member team of bungling bad guys do insane battle with a duo of fearless masked heroes created by a teenage designer of robotic toys and his girlfriend. Yatterman, a dramatization of the 1970s screwball anime series of the same name, provides a nonstop ride full of spontaneous attractions, wild exaggerations, and phantasmagoric sequences. The classic innocuous world of children’s film is permeated by lewd gags and subversive humor revealing the absurdity of generic clichés.

About the director

Takashi Miike (b. 1960, Jao, Japan) gained his international reputation as the "Japanese Tarantino” through excessive scenes of bizarre violence in such films as Audition (1999) and Ichi the Killer (Koroshiya 1, 2001). But Miike is as far from the American filmmaker as everyone else is from him. He shoots four or five movies each year and has never written his own script. He creates custom projects which he brands with his unmistakably personal style. Miike’s creative trademark is distinguished by its open-minded interpretation of screenplays and a playful approach to genre, form, and the traditional rational or causal limitations of the story. His filmography contains contributions to virtually every film category, from crime dramas and musicals to meta-genre movies and art films.