Cutie Honey (Hideaki Anno, 2004) C-

Cutie Honey is a completely retarded Japanese live-action film based off a popular TV show that I would have never sought out in a million years if my friend Ashley hadn't bought it herself and had me watch it with her. I must say that the opening scenes were fun, if completely ridiculous, and the entrance by Gold Claw (Hairi Katagiri), one of four members of the elite Panther Claw organization trying to retrieve the I-system from superhero/android/slightly lesbianic Cutie Honey (Eriko Sato), was both frightening and divariffic in the extreme. When Hideaki Anno first reveals her in a tight close up, I was in stitches, nearly rolling on the floor, laughing at the layers of thick make up and over the top expressions that she uses. It turns out that she's the most fun of any of the four Panther Claws and the film never tops the moment when she blows up the entire fucking bridge for about 90 seconds straight and still doesn't hit Honey. Eventually, Honey gets the best of Gold Claw and ends up dropping her in the river, presumably killing her. The film never recovers from this great moment because-- and I never thought I would say this about a movie-- it gets too bogged down with uninteresting backstory and narrative and doesn't have enough explosions. It also doesn't help that Gold Claw is the only cool villain and she only returns for two unimportant scenes (present a gift to their leader Sister Jill and then getting killed by Sister Jill for begging for another chance to kill Cutie Honey), leaving the audience wondering why they didn't just kill her in the beginning straight away. I also found it completely strange how random people just broke out in song for absolutely no reason (the random white haired girl introducing Sister Jill and Black Claw right before he battles with Cutie Honey). A completely fucked up movie that's not even good enough to be deemed "so bad it's good."