Watch The Calamari Wrestler For Free

Overrated and overhyped

I'll tell you why so serious

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

I have previously reviewed a couple films by Minoru Kawasaki and found both of them to be completely bizarre...as well as worthy additions to my "you ain't seen nothing' yet" series of reviews of strange films. Executive Koala is a strange murder mystery starring a guy dressed up in a koala costume and Rug Cop is a hilarious film where a weirdo group of hero cops, and a smart toupee, fight evil! Here in Calamari Wrestler, Kawasaki has crafted yet another ultra-strange film...a film about a professional wrestler somehow reincarnated as a giant squid!!When the film begins, Taguchi has just been crowned the king of Japanese wrestling. However, as he raised his new championship belt to the heavens, it's snatched away....by a six foot tall squid!! And then the squid proceeds to beat the crap out of the champ. No, this is not a cartoon...the filmmaker has a guy in tights wearing a squid costume! Sounds pretty weird...well, it only gets weirder from here!At first, Calamari Wrestler has a hard time getting a re-match with Taguchi. After all, the big shots in charge of wrestling don't want the invertebrate to be a hero and will only arrange a match if Calamari agrees to throw the fight! Undaunted, he goes on a campaign to win the love of the Japanese public and soon the fans are demanding the fight takes place...and Calamari be allowed to try his best to win. However, when the big match is just about to begin, a huge surprise takes place....Taguchi has learned how to transform himself into a giant fighting octopus!!! Who will win this battle of the titans? And, what other incredibly strange surprises are in store for the audience when they see this film? And trust me...it only gets stranger!!This film is very enjoyable because it never takes itself seriously and is great for a laugh. It certainly ain't sophisticated entertainment, but it IS entertaining and fun. Quality-wise, I still prefer Rug Cop, but Calamari Wrestler is still one delightfully strange film and a worthy addition to Kawasaki's list of bizarro films!

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.

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.

I never thought that a film set in the professional wrestling arena could be so entertaining on so many comic levels. From slapstick to irony, the artful deadpan acting and the multi-faceted script filled my livingroom with laughter. Every time the reliance on the costumes began to irritate my sensibilities the intentional ambiguities and incongruities of the characterizations fractured my funny-bone.Love is a many-tentacled thing for the lovely girlfriend who can't make up her mind and the comedy comes at the viewer from all directions: Love and loyalty, character and competition,fathers and sons, winners and losers, biology, gastronomy and sport-tainment are all satirized.I think that this film should appeal to fans of wrestling, "The Iron Chef", "Finding Nemo", "Rocky", sci-fi and anyone who appreciates that humor knows no international boundaries. The film is suitable for all audiences. Anyone who gets a fraction of the gags will be entertained. It would be a great Saturday night comedy for the whole family. An English language dub would eliminate the only barrier to the film's mass-appeal.