Review of Yattâman

Yattâman (2009)
7/10
Live action anime, with heavy feedback applied.
9 May 2011
So the challenge is to make a full length live action movie from an anime series which did not stray too far from "Dudly Do-Right" in scope.

One way, and this is what director Miike chooses, is to keep the visuals and story at the original "Loony-Tunes" level, but make the characters and subtext more adult. This will either work for you, or leave you aghast, depending on if you expected a kids movie or not.

It's obvious from the opening shot of Doronjo where Miike is headed with this movie. It's a kids movie for adults, not to be confused with a kids movie with jokes thrown in for adults. I enjoyed it.

Kyoko Fukada as Doronjo is hot enough to burn celluloid; the rest of the Dorombo gang is well cast, too. The Yatterman side is weaker, but probably deliberately so. The running gag of the movie is that the Dorombo gang must always lose, this is funnier if the good guys don't really seem to be worthy opponents.

There is a lot of CG animation in this movie, and while it's well done for the most part, the extended CG fight scenes get less and less interesting as the film rolls on into the second half.
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