Wow! Such a good movie.

The Worst Film Ever

Absolutely brilliant

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

Being a fan of Godzilla, I was interested in this movie because of its director (Koji Hashimoto, Godzilla 1984) and effects director (Koichi Kawakita, Heisei effects director from 1989 to 1997). I appreciate the ambitions of this film, wanting to be a sort of Japanese equivalent of a film like 2001 rather than another star wars knock off like many of the time, and indeed the effects of this film truly are great, I would say on par for the most par with American films of the time. But, sadly, great effects work cant save this shoddy plot. the core concepts seem sound, in the future humans have colonized off world areas, debate among groups on whether it is right to do so, and having to save the planet from a doomsday scenario. But the plot is filled with underdeveloped characters and motivations, ideas that seem to just drop off halfway through (like the Jupiter Ghost ), and a general vibe of melancholy that never feels earned (in that, characters die so that we feel sad, but they aren't nearly developed enough to where we SHOULD care). I do feel that somewhere in this mess there is a great work of science fiction, and perhaps some day there will be a good film of Komatsu's novel, but as it is, this is just a messy, albeit somewhat interesting, misfire.

While "Bye, Bye Jupiter" is a bad film, you can't completely dismiss it because there are a few aspects of it that are well done...just a few. In addition, it is a nice bit of nostalgia for old fogies like me who lived through the 1980s--the film is VERY '80s in its look and style.The movie begins in the future and the Earth now has 18 billion people! And, many million more live throughout the solar system. Dr. Eiji Honda (Tomokazu Miura) is in charge of a ridiculous project--though the film treats EVERYTHING deadly serious. They wish to turn Jupiter into a 'mini-sun' so they can then inhabit the nearby moons and planets. However, a small cult of futuristic hippies are doing everything they can to derail this project. Their leader is an obese hippie who sings songs about how wonderful the Earth and nature are (no, it is NOT played by Al Gore).Later, after a deep-space probe is destroyed, the evidence suggests that the solar system and a black hole are on a collision course--and the Earth will be destroyed in only two years! So, Dr. Honda comes up with a crazy plan to blow Jupiter out of orbit and explode it in order to divert the black hole. And how will he accomplish this seemingly impossible task AND save the Earth? Well, he'll do it the way any Japanese picture would handle it--give the project to an 11 year-old! So, on a planet of 18,000,000,000 people, there is no one more qualified and our fate rests on his child-size brain! God help us! Let's talk for a moment about precocious children in Japanese films. This dumb cliché is pretty common in their films. Children often have psychic love-bonds with giant monsters (such as the little brats in "Godzilla Versus the Smog Monster" and "Gamera"). Then, there are the kid science whiz heroes like Johnny Sokko with his flying robot (which, incidentally was stolen by "The Iron Giant"). There are also some sci-fi examples--such as in one of "Invasion of the Neptune Men". There are probably MANY more examples (heck, I am no expert on Japanese cinema)...and yet it boggles the minds of non-Japanese audiences how such a ridiculous cliché repeats itself.Okay, now back to the story. Just before the planet gets blown (maybe I should have worded this better), a group of four terrorists from the cult attack the station and nearly derail this project. Now you'd think that with such an important Earth-saving project that's been in the works for two years AND the cult had done many things already to sabotage the project that they'd have a few security folks on hand! But, it's up to Honda, a red-shirt and the precocious kid (who's now in a wheelchair--much like Davros) to stop the baddies! Oh, and there's some weird and completely undeveloped plot about the 'ghost of Jupiter'--a city-size thing that is a relic from some other planet. I'd say more about this, but frankly the film never really knew what to do with this.So let's talk about the film itself. First, the film has a very international cast...actually, it's mostly white folks and Japanese folks. And as for the actors who look like Americans, none of them seemed to be very competent at acting--and some were downright bad. It was harder to tell with the Japanese ones, as they were all dubbed. And speaking of this, the DVD was weird. It had captions but they often were not much like what the actors were saying--sometimes they said the exact opposite of each other! Additionally, many times the dub and/or the subtitles got units of measurement wrong--and it was silly. Often meters were used instead of kilometers and minutes and hours were often mixed up...it was pretty weird.Considering it was a sci-fi film, it's sad that possibly the worst part of the film (aside from the often senseless writing) were the special effects. The crazy space sex scene was just weird and done very amateurishly. The rest of it ranged from pretty good to just plain awful--and more often than not, the effects were awful. For example, "Space: 1999" (made almost a decade earlier) looked better.But lets talk some more about the bad writing. It wasn't just that the plot often made sense, but the characters just said and did some very dumb things--and often seemed like caricatures than real people. They often did things that made you say to yourself 'why did they do THAT?!'. Then there's the weird knockoff of "Jaws"--yes in a sci-fi film they did a Jaws-like sequence! So overall, aside from occasional moments of decent film work, the overall film is just a dopey mess that only fans of '80s nostalgia could love. It's a very silly film--especially the last 20 minutes or so.

SAYANORA JUPITER is a very worthy Toho studios effort about a 2010-like mission to a transmogrifying Jupiter that is hard to keep track of and runs about 20 minutes too long. I could even tell you which 20 minutes needed to go, specifically the sub plot about the Space Hippies and their mascot dolphin, named Jupiter. Coincidence? Hardly, though in all honesty the plot is so convoluted and hard to keep track of that I'm not sure if the dolphin's name was ironic or descriptive. It takes the film almost an hour before it's primary focus of contact with extra-terrestrials who have ill intent in mind actually begins to gel. The film is actually quite violent for an otherwise PG rated space adventure and features some unexpected nudity which wasn't really necessary. As a matter of fact what the movie needs more than anything else is editing: This should have been trimmed down to about 90 minutes and focused on the space adventure aspect.It's a real shame too because the special effects are really marvelous, with some ingenious model/miniature work, a high caliber of production design and an interesting international cast that is capable of carrying the material. None of it looks unreal, the ship designs and sundries like space suit creations all look believable, but the story lacks discipline and tends to ramble. The filmmakers also foolishly decided that we'd share in their sentiment for their epic touches like a less than happy ending, which is welcome but I don't know ... a whole mission control filled with teary eyed technicians who stand up and salute at the same moment while the surviving "seen it all" scientist type delivers a solemn monologue on the surface of an asteroid in front of a space memorial? C'mon ... The film is also remarkably noisy, loud, flashy and unsubtle. It's likable and I'm sure that on repeat viewings I'll find more about it to enjoy, which leads to perhaps the kindest thing one can say about it: It will probably command repeat viewings from those who appreciate it's somewhat unkempt length. Thank goodness for DVD players remembering where to start up again after a nice long nap.5/10: Great special effects though, I didn't know Toho was capable of work like this.

I first thought the film was okay, but I enjoyed it only because of my curiosity stemming from the film's rarity. Not too many people in the Godzilla fan community have seen it, and it should stay that way. When I rewatched it, I started getting bored within the first minute. Many scenes drag on needlessly (e.g. the sex scene against a space backdrop), stretching the film's running time to an unbearable 2 hours, and no "good bad" movie can be 2 hours long. Many scenes are inane (e.g. the sex scene..., the hippies). The characters trying to sabotage the Jupiter Solarization Project are horribly annoying because their merely brats who want to be responsible for the deaths of 200 billion people. They have no motivation for this. They're just stupid, annoying, selfish, sanctimonious punks (and of course their leader is French-looking). Despite the running time, you barely know most of the characters, and then they try to milk some tears from you by some pointless death scenes. It breaks the "don't show a good movie in the middle of your crappy movie" rule by intercutting a fistfight with scenes from GHIDRAH THE THREE HEADED MONSTER in what I assume is a vapid, nongermane, and utterly pointless social commentary. The music is something out of a high school graduation, repetitive and grating. There's gratuitous cruelty to animals mixed with a laughably bad rubber shark and dolphin. The only good part of this movie are the excellent special effects (excluding the shark and dophin), but they are too few and far between. This entire movie just ticks me off, especially since it took money and good special effects people away from GOJIRA (1984). It just tries to grasp at your heartstrings, but it's filled with stupid, dull, annoying characters you'd just love to beat the crap out of and filler on the level of the refueling scenes from THE STARFIGHTERS. Absolutely one of the worst movies I've ever seen.1/10 (It'd be 0 if IMDB's ratings went that low)