2005 Color 25min
Starring: Masafumi Kishi, Takuma Sasahara, Dai Shimizu and Akane Yumoto.
Directed by: Jun Awazu
Have you ever felt like you’ve been ripped off? Bamboozled? Maybe misled in some way? Led astray perhaps, or simply misinformed? Well I certainly have. What in the hell does this have to do with our subject today, you ask? Allow me to explain.
Feeling screwed? Me too.I took a trip to my local Best Buy a few days ago to buy something that I didn’t really need, with money that I didn’t really have, when I came across Negadon. I hadn’t purchased any movies for awhile (well, it had been awhile for me, anyway) so I decided to pick it up. The running time on the back said that it was only 70 minutes long, but I figured, what the hell? I happened to be in the mood for that particular brand of wackiness that only the Japanese can provide, so I gave it a shot.
I returned home and popped the DVD into my player expecting 70 minutes of awesome Japanese giant robot movie madness, what I received however, was 25 minutes of pretentious art house bullcrap. I’m not even going to go into detail with this film because it really doesn’t matter, what’s important here is this; I got swindled!!!
Half empty, Half full? Anyway you look at it, I got gypped!!! Instead of displaying the running time of the main feature on the back of the case, Central Park Media felt it necessary to add the running time of all the special features as well, pushing a very miniscule 25 minutes into a more appealing 70 minutes. Totally unacceptable I say. I paid $14.99 for 25 minutes of movie. That’s 60 cents a minute! It costs less to make a long distance phone call from Cincinnati to Beijing for crying out loud!!!
Eat your heart out George Lucas. All of that said, I still feel compelled to say a few nice things about the film. First off, the animation is spectacular and the filmmakers did a wonderful job of capturing that old kaiju feel, but because the film is only 25 minutes in length there isn’t much build up to the epic final battle and it leaves you feeling a bit letdown when it‘s all said and done. Slightly making up for this is the DVD, which is jam-packed with special features, including an interview with the director, a “making of“ special, digital liner notes (Which I wish more companies would do with foreign films), and 2 short films, which ironically when put together, are not much shorter than the main feature, clocking in at around 8 minutes.
For those of you who are still interested, here’s a quick breakdown of the action: Big explosion, Big monster, more explosions, useless Japanese Self Defense Force, more explosions, big robot, big final battle, biggest explosion, The End. I hope you enjoy it…I however, am still bitter.
The End? 25 minutes? Hulk smash!!!
Reviewed by Derek Miller
Posted 4/15/07
