Ge Ge Ge no Kitaro // dvd movie review // early!

by Kris   ⋅   July 6, 2008   ⋅   Comment now   ⋅    RSS

Director: Katsuhide Motoki
Starring: Eiji Wentz, Mao Inoue, Yo Oizumi
Genre: Action, Fantasy, Manga
US DVD Release Date: October 28, 2008

GeGeGe no Kitaro tries too hard. It tries to be enchanting but relies too heavily on floppy CG (nearly 700 shots). It tries to be a comedy without wit. It wants to be an action blow-out without excitement. It even attempts to be a romance without chemistry, in fact it comes across as creepy. And when the ultra dampening piano plunks desperately attempt to flag the tragic bits, you wish it were tangible just so you could slap it.

GeGeGe no Kitaro suffers from “dorama-itis”, aka: just being a plain television drama bloated onto the big screen. With yokai (folklore-ish monsters) running amok in the human realm, you would expect it would be easily eerie and whimsical; I mean, the half-human half-yokai hero has a remote-controlled vest, hand, hair (he shoots strands like porcupine spines until bald), his best friend is a cute cat-girl and his father is a resurrected hot-tubbing eyeball.

What you get, unfortunately, is a cautionary tale sketchily rallying against dishonesty, avarice, and adults bearing gifts, but mostly begging kids to worship old shrines and Nature gods. It may be the film’s final plea to believe, please belieeeve.

The most interesting (using the term loosely) and comedic bits definitely involve Yo Oizumi (Udon) as buck-toothed Nezumi Otoko (Rat Man), who acts exactly how you’d imagine, conniving and devious, betraying Kitaro one minute and asking him for favors the next. In desperate need of cash (guess recession hits the spirit world as well), Nezumi Otoko and a handful of other yokai act as henchmen for a greedy land developer intent on scaring tenants away rather than compensating them. You think it’s going along the thread of Human vs. Nature, which would’ve been an excellent topic, but it doesn’t. Nezumi Otoko accidentally enters a kuko or evil kitsune (fox god) den and steals a strobing stone to pawn for more moolah. You then think it’s going along the thread of Yokai vs. Yokai, but then a human, entranced by the stone, nabs it, further forcing the interaction between mortals and spirits, or Human vs. Yokai. But then it changes direction yet again.

The human is the down-on-his luck father of an adorable little boy Kenta (Ruka Uchida) who previously called upon Kitaro to help him thwart the yokai plague. And because everyone in this movie seems to be psychic, popping up when someone is in danger, Kitaro shows up with his boomerang geta (wooden sandals) to help Kenta and unwittingly gets scolded by Kenta’s older sister Mika (Mao Inoue) and likes it, spending the rest of the movie pining for her affection and looking defeated and depressed when it’s unrequited. Teenage girls don’t usually go for 150 year-old guys with Janet Reno hair, *sigh*. I’m sure they chose pop star Eiji Wentz for the popularity factor (even though I’ve never heard of him, but I’m not a J-Popping tween), and perhaps for the glint of his grey-blue eye peeking out through a grey-blue mop bob, but I’m not sure if he was supposed to be so blue (and boring) emotionally or if it was just bad acting/directing.

The kuko Lord (Satoshi Hashimoto, who sort of looks like my grandfather) seemed like a last ditch effort to inject some life into the film, but his band of evil kitsune soon got lost in Matrix reruns. There’s a poorly executed insertion of a yokai court trial as an attempt to add tension for our hero and urgency when his father sacrifices himself to take the punishment meant for Kitaro. There is a blip of cool when a “Sand Witch” summons crows to hoist our hero from peril. Unfortunately it’s to no avail as Kitaro is stuck on being lovestruck and inadvertently comes across as an insolent son in need of a pep talk. Now you just want to slap him.

GeGeGe no Kitaro’s funky old school monster-mash music in the beginning, supplied by Wentz, is pretty catchy, although obscured by the obligatory superhero score when events are supposed to pick up, especially near the end when they throw every cliché out there, scrambling for some kind of suspense. There’s even a magic carpet ride on what appears to be toilet paper. Hmm.

Previously there had been a long run of Gegege film adaptations to satiate and irritate fans of the popular manga (pictured right) which set up roots back in the early ’60s. Screenwriter Daisuke Habara, who was also responsible for Hula Girls, which Chris noted as “tiring in its routine, cutesy, clichéd, trite, and ultimately lazy retreading of every other underdog dance story made within the past twenty years” has supplied yet another awkward and yawn-inducing yarn.

Let’s hope the sequel Gegege no Kitaro 2: Sennen no Noroi Uta (1000 Year Old Cursed Song) will actually have a storyline so you won’t have to slap yourself just to stay awake.

About the Author

Kris Kobayashi-Nelson says these directors/screenwriters rarely disappoint: Peter Greenaway, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Gus van Sant, Gregg Araki. Kris claims that Jake Gyllenhaal, Cillian Murphy, Desmond Harrington and Casey Affleck are much more than pretty faces.

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