Film Review – The Calamari Wrestler

February 8th, 2010 | POSTED BY Chad Eng

The Calamari Wrestler – As odd as this sounds, the Japanese actually made a film about a giant squid that wrestles people. The movie opens with a wrestler winning the championship belt in a title match in front of thousands of fans. Suddenly, the belt is snatched out of the champs hand by a giant squid, who proceeds to hand out an ass-whoopin’ to a handful of wrestlers, including the recently-crowned champ. Wow. I don’t think I ever imagined I would just write those words.

The wrestling commissioner wants to make money by staging an official rematch between the champ and the squid, but he wants the squid to throw the match for publicity’s sake. The squid isn’t havin’ it. The squid is actually the former champ come back in the body of a squid. The squid is after both the title and the champ’s girlfriend, and he’s got to somehow convince the commissioner to let him fight. He’s fighting to get his girl back, so he’s got motivation on his side. The final championship match is set up, but there are some surprises in store.

This film is utterly stupid. It’s not even amusing to watch and there’s no action. It’s supposed to be entertaining, especially since it’s about an entertainment mechanism (wrestling), but it totally flops as far as plot (even *I* didn’t expect this weak of a plot). There could have been more wrestling and more explosions and more drama or more hilarious dialogue or simply some fantastical action – it’s a freaking SQUID movie after all. But they act like it’s totally normal and kill all of the hype I had expected in this film. I’m super disappointed in this film. You’ll tell people about this one, but you won’t let them watch it, if you want to keep your friends.

(2 out of 5 fus)

Aquatic Creatures, Calamari Wrestler, Japanese, Kana Ishida, Minoru Kawasaki, Osamu Nishimura, Wrestling