Sgt. Kabukiman N.Y.P.D. (1996) * * * A movie review by Serdar Yegulalp Copyright 1998 by Serdar Yegulalp
CAPSULE: Another great piece of nonsense from the masters of enjoyably bad moviemaking.
Troma are the best bad filmmakers in the world. They're totally aware of their purpose in life, and they embrace it with a vehemence and a glee that other schlock-makers can't even come near. Actually, most Troma films are not nearly as bad (unwatchable, stupidly conceived, boring) as many high-ticket Hollywood movies, and that's the secret of their charm. They're always entertaining, if ridiculous. I saw SGT. KABUKIMAN in a week where I'd suffered through an unbelievable amount of forgettable and uncompelling big-ticket junk movies -- some of them bad but most of them just plain dull. KABUKIMAN was by far the best of the bunch -- a funny, sustained, surprisingly witty movie with a ton of good lines.
The plot is typically Troma-weird: an NYPD detective, name of Harry Griswold, gets involved in a massacre during a Kabuki performance and gets the power of one of the dying players transferred to him. Now he can transform himself into Kabukiman, with a wild hairdo and outfit, and who can sling sushi and chopsticks to stop foes in their tracks. Really.
All of this is, of course, utterly idiotic, and done with grubby low-budget
production qualities that make the movie all the more fun. It's also
well-sustained. The movie doesn't simply pick one schtick and slog through
it, but has fun coming up with bizarre tangents to the story (like when
Griswold tries to transform into Kabukiman and... uh... comes up with
something else), and plays out its elements well. The movie finds a tone and
sticks with it, which is not easy to do: most of the other movies I saw that
week were hopelessly confused as to whether they were taking themselves
seriously or not. KABUKIMAN knows, and wallows happily in it. Better to be
an honest schlock movie than a confused or dishonest serious movie, any day
of the week.
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