Gamera!

From Aintitcoolnews, "As many of you already know, there will be no more Godzilla films (Final Wars was the last). It's disappointing for the casual fan of the "man-in-suit" genre (like myself), so it must be absolutely crushing for hardcore fans. No doubt, somewhere down the road, our favourite beast will reawaken with a fresh bout of nuclear testing, but for now he's deep in slumber, and we must wait. But, as many of you also know, the big guy's got friends and imitators, and surely the most popular of these is Gamera - the giant turtle with a flying spinning shell and fireballs to spare. Well, that dude has a new movie. It's called "Chiisaki Yuushatachi - Gamera", which is roughly translated as "Gamera: Little Brave Ones". The first thing that must be mentioned about the new Gamera is that it's, as you can probably tell by the title, primarily a kids' movie. This may disappoint some, but, from what I hear, it's a return to the monster's roots ("friend of all children" and all that). It's kind of like E.T. meets, well, Godzilla. Through most of the film, we watch as Gamera is raised by an innocent little boy from a regular-sized turtle to the gargantuan fighting monster he becomes by the film's finale. It's more heartwarming than adrenaline producing. That said, there's still plenty of what you came for: monster-on-monster, man-in- suit, model-crushing action. It opens very well. We find out it's the 1970s, and then we see people running and screaming. Gamera is battling a swarm of Gyaos (Gyaoses?), and anything in the way gets burned or impaled. Before you know it, the bad guys have got the upper hand, and Gamera has no choice but to self-destruct, taking the flying demons with him, and thus saving humanity. Quite fun. The event has a lasting effect on one witness, a little boy who, thirty-odd years later, owns a Chinese restaurant and has a boy of his own. They're an unhappy family, though, as the mother recently passed away, and it's the first summer vacation the boy is spending alone (dad's a bit busy making fried rice for drunk salarymen). Wandering off on his own one day, the boy decides to investigate a strange glinting object he's spotted a few times on a nearby island. It turns out to be an egg. The egg hatches, and out pops a little turtle.

From here, we get all the cute stuff in one block. The boy names the thing Toto, and, with the help of his two best friends from school, and the girl next door (who is sucked into the situation when she spots little Toto flying around the room), raises the turtle while trying to keep it a secret - difficult when it doubles its size every day. Lots of precious moments and drama follow. While this is all going on (boy and father fight, girl has to go to the hospital in Nagoya for an operation, Toto/Gamera gets bigger and cuter), strange things are happening off Japan's coasts. Ships are sinking and seamen are being eaten by an unseen creature. It's actually quite surprising when the monster finally shows its face. Suddenly, in the middle of all the drama, people start running and screaming (bringing bad memories back to dad), and, out of nowhere, a giant lizard-like monster called Jidas starts eating people and destroying things. From here on in, we get the good stuff, and the rest of the film plays like a good-old-fashioned monster movie (but not too hard core - I guess like a Mothra movie). We get to see Jidas smashing crap and impaling things on his sharp, whip-like, extending tongue. We get to see Toto try his hand at fighting for the first time, and discover his powers. Best of all, we get to see Nagoya get totally trashed by the ensuing giant-monster melee. Throughout, we continue following the children and their brave mission to help Gamera (hence the title), but the action takes centre stage for the second half of the film.

The whole thing reminds me very much of other recent monster/robot/ghost movies of late, like Tetsujin 28go, or Yokai Daisenso (The Great Yokai War). If you can get over the fact that it's made with kids, not fanboys, in mind, you'll like it a lot better than if you cringe at the idea of brave little kids forming a human chain between soldiers and a turtle. If, on the other hand, you think all the action in the world wouldn't make up for a single tear rolling down the cheek of a little boy as he says goodbye to his pet, then perhaps you should wait for Godzilla's return.

Chiisaki Yuushatachi - Gamera opens in Japan on April 29th.

Senator Ovaltine (from Tokyo")