Fantastic Fest 2009: ‘Yatterman’ Review

Based on the Japanese weekend cartoon from the ’70’s, Yatterman takes the simple concept of giant robots fighting endlessly week after week, and turns it into so much more. Since it’s directed by Takashi Miike (Ichi the Killer, Audition, Sukiyaki Western Django) you may expect a violent, gore filled horror film, but Yatterman isn’t that. It’s very much a kids movie. A live action cartoon. Well, kind of.

It’s as if you took a live action Power Rangers (kid friendly, very-PG) and threw in sexual innuendos, perverts, and giant robots having sex. Yes, in this movie, giant robots basically stop fighting in the middle of a battle to get it on. I couldn’t imagine American parents taking their kids to see this one, even if it was in English. This, in part, is what makes Yatterman so entertaining. The filmmakers understand that the original concept is really not that great, so they spice it up with self-referential humor and completely over the top action.

The basic story of the film is that “Yatterman”, a group consisting of a young guy, his girlfriend, and their giant dog-like robot, are constantly doing battle with “Doronbo”, a group of three thieves. As the movie opens, the groups are in the middle of battle, and it’s clear that they’ve been doing this for quite some time. Doronbo has more members and better weapons, but luckily for Yatterman, they are complete idiots. Over the course of the film, they do battle many times, always trying to get four “skull stones” which seem to have some kind of power when they come together. Really though, the plot is quite useless, and merely serves as a way for the characters to get together and generally be hilarious.

To give an example of this movie’s ridiculousness, one of the many robots is a woman with a wedding cake for a head and giant machine gun shooting and missile launching breasts that gets turned on by a bunch of robot ants and later a robot dog. Another situation has the movie actors talking to their animation, voice-actor counterparts and commenting on how, “we used to sound like that!” Yet another involves the Doronbo villains swindling people out of their money by offering ridiculous, rip-off products, then dancing and singing around their giant stacks of cash as they build new robots. And that’s just a small selection of this movie’s craziness.

Even things that would bring down most films, such as the quality of the visual effects, don’t matter here. The effects look absolutely awful and CG characters don’t blend in to the environment one bit, but they’re so entertaining that you won’t find yourself caring. If I have one complaint about the film, it’s that the last thirty minutes or so do drag a bit, hitting you over the head with the love aspect of the story. It doesn’t ever go so far as to be boring, but it could stand to lose ten minutes or so.

If you used to enjoy Saturday morning cartoons, but find that their live action adaptations are just dull and useless, you’ll love this movie. It’s a fun popcorn movie that doesn’t aspire to be anything else. Oh yeah, and as far as robot films go, good CG or not, this movie kicks Bayformers’ ass.