K06 - Gamera vs. Gaos

Observation: At one point Joel calls Servo 'Josh,' a few seconds after you hear his watch go off.

Movie plot: The construction of a highway is delayed because of some locals not wanting to sell. Some near riots break out, but none of that matters because the construction has awakened Gaos, a sort of flying lizard who shoots laser beams and is never really explained. But none of that matters because here's Gamera! Friend to all children! Enemy to all other monsters! Other things! There's an engineer guy who never takes off his yellow helmet, his dopey fellow engineers, a little kid who sounds like a 40 year old woman huffing helium and of course, the standard monster movie array of large eye-browed scientists and lots and lots of extras. Oh and the villagers. And some politicians. There's a lot of characters in this movie. Look out for a especially goofy scene involving a revolving restaurant.

Movie review: Okay... Now the Gamera movies are getting bad, mostly because of "Itchy". Okay, the majority of screen time in this movie is given to adult characters, but lordy, Itchy is annoying. It makes me root for the villains, and that's not a good thing as far as the movie makers are concerned. Then again, I'm not a little Japanese boy so I'm far from the target audience. (Thank God for small miracles.) The thing that really gets me about these movies is how bloody they are! Legs are ripped off, hands are sawed in half and each time torrents of 'blood' come out. It's just oddly contrasting with the goofiness and general kid-ness of the films. Weird. Ya, that's what it is, weird.
4/10

Sketches: Once again, dominated by voicemails and the frozen corpse of Crow. They're very cute, especially the one where the little kid invites them to his birthday party. Couldn't do that on the Sci-Fi channel, that's for sure. The second segment brings Servo's 'new voice' which is the one Johh Weinstein uses until the end of first season. I love it, and the sketch that introduces pretty funny too, even if some of the impersonations are quite, quite bad.
3/10

Riffing: Whew. Thank god Joel has some back-up in the theater, and Servo was on fire for the first half of the movie, until he kind of drives his re-occurring jokes, funny as they were, into the ground. That's okay though, because Joel's odd understanding of Itchy and Gamera's special friendship rules the second half of the movie. Best effort yet.
Best riff: "Mooo!" (Repeat ad naseum)
5/10

Overall: I got to admit. I'm impressed and surprised. I was laughing quite heartily at points in this movie, almost as much as Joel was at Josh's quips. When the improvised nature of the early show works, it really works, like in this one. Although its so hit and miss, I can see why they changed. I get the feeling I'm just lucky that this is such an easy target of a movie. Fun though.
6/10

What I learned:
A couple of mildly incompetent private engineers, a little kid, and his sister(?) have permanent access to the highest parts of Japanese government.