Kattiera Nana I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Lovesusti The Worst Film Ever

Loui Blair It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

Lucia Ayala It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

thecrow22 I was looking through the video store a while back and my friend came across this little title, and just started laughing. The title alone is enough to make someone just ask "What the hell?" But, for the fun of it, I rented it and sat down to what ended up to be a very fun movie. The special effects(if you want to call them that) are god awful, but that is half the fun of the movie. Watching the Squid wrestle with humans, and other creatures as well is downright absurd, but as messed up as it is, it is a fun movie that really has no point other than to make viewer say "What the hell?" If you want to see a movie that is zany but tries its hardest to be serious at the same time, see this movie.

jjjjjjjjjjjjj-4 Goddess, I sure love film festivals like the Hole In The Head festival in S.F. where I first saw this. I laughed out loud from start to finish, as did the rest of the audience.This is a film about the values that are important to the characters & their society. Ultimately it is a film about family vs. modern society. A comparison to "professional" wrestling is appropriate. The morality play, the hype, the biological enhancements of the participants, the utter fakery of its "sport" & "competition" of "pro" wrestling are all mirrored in C.W. It isn't a big step from the steroid enhanced stars of the WWWhatever to the crustacean enhanced stars of C.W.The charm of the movie is how seriously it takes its subject matter, despite the ludicrous plot. The "love interlude" is both screamingly funny and truly touching. You want to believe in the characters.I don't know how apt the comparison to Santo movies is, however. Although both C.W. and the Santo films include wrestling scenes (with monsters); the match wrestling scenes in Santo films are gratuitous and unrelated to plot. (p.s. I love Santo!). In C. W., match wrestling is both integral to the plot and of integral value to the characters. Compare to the scripted violence of "pro" wrestling, which claims to be "real", yet is so obviously fake to anyone who has ever wrestled. ("Pro" wrestlers are trained athletes: but they are actors, not wrestlers, when performing their stunts in the ring.)I was & remained charmed by this film. No one I have shared it with has watched it without falling out of their seats in laughter.

Simon Booth OK, make a list of all the things you've never seen a movie about.Keep going...Keep going...OK, stop.Now, that's quite an impressive list, but I bet you $5 it doesn't include "A Pro-wrestling Squid"! Right? 'cause if you haven't seen CALAMARI WRESTLER, there's no way you would ever conceive of CALAMARI WRESTLER... unless you're writer/director Kawasaki Minoru, apparently! Taguchi finally achieves his dream when he knocks out his opponent to claim the Japan Pro Wrestling championship... but he barely has time to hold up the belt when it is grasped from his hands by... a giant squid. The squid then knocks him out cold and claims the championship for his own. Who is this wrestling squid? Where did he come from? Should giant squid be allowed to fight in the Japan Pro-Wrestling league? The leaders of the industry think no, but Taguchi feels he must have a real match with the squid or he'll never feel like a true champion, and the squid needs a proper match so that he can truly claim the championship himself. Will the public accept a cephalopod as a wrestler? CALAMARI WRESTLER is basically a "boxing movie", and follows most of the conventions of the genre... with the exception of species. There's also a bit of a love triangle, and some social commentary on the state of Japan in the modern age. It's shot on video and features some of the worst acting ever committed to screen... but it's about a giant wrestling squid! And that's just cool :-) It's very very silly indeed, and really quite amusing - and even quite touching at times. The rubber suits for the squid and some other characters who enter the plot are pretty well done... though they never actually look like anything other than a man in a rubber suit, which is part of their charm.Cheap and cheerful, and something that could only have emerged from Japan... not quite brilliant, but interesting enough to receive a recommendation... especially if you're feeling that your cinematic diet is starting to feel a bit bland :-)

cramsay-2 After seeing this delightful little film, the only way I can think of to describe it is as a Santo (Mexican wrestling) movie set in the weird, weird world of a Japanese cartoon sushi menu. In fact it follows the typical Santo film formula to a T: orphans, love interest, entertaining the children, fighting for the glory of the sport of wrestling. Only the wrestler is a giant squid.Oh, and the Squilla Boxer is a Mantis Shrimp, and they really do have a punch as fast as a bullet. The biology is surprisingly accurate, such as pointing out that invertebrates are naturally good wrestlers because they can get out of any hold. I guess that shouldn't be surprising coming from a Japanese film, though.If you love sushi, cephalopods, magical realism and wrestling, this is the film for you! (if you can find it)Charming, and very, very odd.