REVIEW ALL MONSTERS! - HE IS FILLED WITH TURTLE MEAT

Seven years after Kaneko Shusuke put to bed his grand re-casting of goofy-ass '60s monster Gamera as something like a force of nature over a trilogy of some of the best daikaiju eiga ever made, Kadokawa Pictures - the company that had ultimately gathered up the tattered remains of Daiei Film in the interim - brought the character back for what is, as of this writing, his final screen appearance. Once again, Gamera merely followed in the wake of Godzilla: much as the '90s trilogy didn't start until the same year that Godzilla's second phase of movies wrapped up, 2006's Gamera the Brave came out two years after the third phase of Godzilla had ended with the promise that we'd see no more of the big lizard for a full ten years. It would seem, then, that Kadokawa was simply taking advantage of a vacuum in the marketplace, except that the opposite was more true: while the '90s Godzilla films had been largely successful for what they were, the '00s films had trailed off in popularity badly. There was, at any rate, no clamoring for any new daikaiju eiga at the time Gamera the Brave bowed.

And thus we segue into the question of who, exactly, was supposed to be the audience for this film. The darker, more self-serious Gamera trilogy of the '90s makes perfect intuitive sense: I have no idea if it was marketed this way in Japan, but it was perfectly positioned to remind adult viewers of those ludicrous, cheap monster adventures that they watched back when they were kids. Which had now been deepened and enriched with more sobriety and thoughtfulness, growing up much as its audience had. Gamera the Brave, meanwhile, is a straightforward children's movie; probably the single most unabashed children's movie in the franchise. And for what children? The ones who had been born more than a quarter of a century after the campier incarnation of the giant turtle had last been seen in 1971's Gamera vs. Zigra (I'm not counting Gamera: Super Monster, and neither should you)? Because I have a tough time imagining that they'd care. The film's plot actually suggests an answer, in that it features a father who was a kid when Gamera last came around now has a son of his own to share the new incarnation of the monster with, though the relationship between the two is mostly ignored for the bulk of the running time. It could just be that the studio had a brand name and proceeded to make terrible choices with it in a tone-deaf attempt to make some easy money, but I don't like to impugn movie studios like that.

Given that there's virtually no clear reason for Gamera the Brave to exist, it's actually pretty decent. It's unmistakably a children's movie, right down to the goofy music cues, but it's a mostly decent one, with enough well-staged daikaiju action that it doesn't feel as bitterly toothless as the likes of Son of Godzilla, which will always be my gold standard for a children's daikaiju eiga going as wrong as it possibly can. And there are scenes which reinforce something that gets reinforced a lot, if you watch enough children's entertainment made outside of the United States, which that a lot of countries have a much more ambitious and dangerous sense of what qualifies as "kid-friendly entertainment" than we do. There is, in this film, a scene in which the villain kaiju Zedus is scene thoughtfully chomping - complete with cartoon chomping noises - a human being. We don't see the human being, but it's still so casually violent and I will confess to dearly loving it for that.

Things start up in 1973, with Gamera dying; I take this to be an attempt to situate the film in continuity with the first seven movies, and explain why none were made in between 1971 and the reboot in 1995. None were made. Gamera's death comes after he protects the world from a trio of Gyaoses, sacrificing himself to end their reign of evil. Gamera, incidentally, looks willfully unappealing in this scene, worse than in any of the previous films in the franchise, but he goes away fast enough that it's not a huge issue. Many years later, Aizawa Toru (Tomioka Ryo), the young son of Aizawa Kousuke (Tsuda Kanji), who witnessed Gamera's death, is playing around on a rock pile with some friends who are kind of bullyish, and when he separates himself from them, he finds a magic glowing egg. As one does. Hardly has he picked it up when out hatches a perfectly ordinary looking CGI turtle, whom Toru names Toto.

Now, we know what movie we're watching, so we're much less surprised than Toru when his little Toto starts to evidence some very odd skills, uncharacteristic of other turtles, like his ability to fly and breath fire. And I will confess at this point that whatever risk Gamera the Brave was running of totally losing my goodwill (the opening act establishing Toru is way too long for such a tepid little character), when Toto starts to run around exhibiting superpowers, the film won me right back. Not for any good reason, but because Toto's smug look of satisfaction, done without ever making him look less like a real turtle, is the most fucking adorable goddamn thing. And there's a weird but charming shout-out to Gamera vs. Guiron, when a kitchen knife falls blade-first in front of Toto, and the little turtle gets a very angry and intense look on its face before he spits a fireball at it.

Among the turtle's other powers, it grows quickly to a very large size, and we get to see what a juvenile Gamera looks like, with its big earnest wet cow eyes and everything. And from here, Gamera the Brave clicks over into standard-issue Gamera plotting: a monster, the big (and impressively scary) dragon-thing Zedus is making trouble, and instinctively, Toto-Gamera knows that he must fight on behalf of humanity. In round 1, the better-choreographed by far, he ends up incapacitated, and Zedus goes on wreaking havoc while the humans work on a plan to juice up Toto-Gamera until he reaches the full size of his illustrious father, big enough to knock Zedus out completely. Importantly, other than being the requisite boychild who roots for the giant turtle and tells adults about how Toto is a friend to all children, Toru is mostly just a chatty waste of time, contributing a grand total of one action to the entire back half of the plot. Which makes it especially irritating that we had to spend 40 minutes getting to know all about him. But kids' movies need kid protagonists, or whatever.

The film is certainly more soft and gentle than anything preceding it in the series, without real danger even despite the presence of a giant man-eating dragon. Though, the action is actually fairly decent, with a good sense of weight and destruction between the two brawling monsters (it helps that the film balances practical effects with CGI only when necessary, and it ends up looking surprisingly great, even better than the 1990s films). And the film doesn't dumb itself down at all: Toru may not be a very sophisticated observer of the world around him, but that world proceeds along with its adult business much the same as in any daikaiju eiga. So still pretty dumb, but it's not like the stakes have been lowered. The fates of cities still hang in the balance.

Director Tazaki Ryuta, a veteran of action TV and movies for children, handles all of this with a light tone that never feels insubstantial or insincere; it's not great cinematic art, but the 96-minute film breezes past without tripping up on its plot slowdowns, or the moments that might easily have seeped into dimwitted sentimentality, as the relationship between Toru and his giant turtle friend are foregrounded. And it's because Tazaki and screenwriter Tatsui Yukari weren't aiming to make a character story, or a moral play for wee folk, but a quick-stepping action-adventure. This they accomplished. It's not remotely the best farewell to the character, mucking up the grandeur of 1999's Gamera 3: The Revenge of Iris, and going into it knowing that it's the final Gamera story leaves it feeling a lot more hollow than it deserves. But of course, there's unlikely to be a "final" Gamera story as long as there are movies, and until the series gets restarted yet again, Gamera the Brave is a totally satisfying if slight place to pause for a while.