Yikes, what a sad, wet, smelly plop of a movie.
As it turns out, the Gamera boxset I ordered wasn’t the original 60s Showa series, but instead the crappy 90s revival. Sweet mercy. It’s my own fault, of course, a mistake which a minor amount of research would have avoided. But who honestly has the time. Anyway, I’m a depressed shut-in with nothing better to do, so why not give them a whirl?!
Assumedly filmed at the producer’s home and the hillside behind his local shops, whilst utilising stock footage the editor probably found at the bottom of a drawer somewhere, The Guardian of the Universe represents a low-budget shamelessness I thought only the Americans were capable of.
And I’m presuming the producer is male, as truly only a man could stoop this low.
I was going to present this review as one of my “Subtitles Off” posts, but there’s honestly nothing on show worth having fun trying to translate. Monster attacks. Scared civilians. Confused scientists. Pouting military. You know the drill.
Ha! “Drill”! Get it?! Because military.
There was a point during my viewing when I reached out for the remote control to check the film’s progress and muttered menacingly to nobody: “I better be halfway through, or there’s going to be trouble”. I was tragically only a third of the way in, but soldiered on like the masochistic idiot I am.
If this had been made ten years earlier, it would at least have had the classy, grainy patina of a pre-modern movie. But, thanks to whatever film developing processes were introduced during the 90s, The Guardian of the Universe has the joylessly pristine coldness every film has had since.
Who knows, maybe the dialogue has the sharp wit of P G Wodehouse and the crippling emotional depth of Victor Hugo, but I sincerely doubt it.
To the film’s further detriment, there’s no cute kid present to warm our hearts, as with the Showa series. There are cutaways to a nice family dinner, that seems to go on for days, sprinkled bafflingly throughout. Maybe it’s a cultural thing. I just don’t know. Oh and there are attempts at visual camp, including spinning news headlines and vintage screen wipes (not the sort you use to clean your monitor at work), but they feel incredibly out of place.
In terms of positives, there are a fair few laugh-out-loud moments, which I dearly hope are unintentional. I really don’t want to give anyone involved that much credit. There’s the occasional pretty face here and there, I guess. Some of the monster and model effects are cute, but used so sparingly they may as well not be there at all.
And I believe that’s all I have and can be bothered to say on the matter.
In an attempt to salvage something positive from the 95 minutes I could have better spent falling off the wagon, I’ve taken some screenshots of moments that actually looked quite nice. Hopefully, these below images will make your experience of this miserable post somewhat worthwhile too.
Sigh.
Cheap and nasty, just like yo’ momma.
Do stay in touch, darlings.
Toodles!
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