Director: Noboru Iguchi (Machine Girl)
Writers: Noboru Iguchi
Producers: Yoshinori Chiba, Yōko Hayama, Satoshi Nakamura
Starring: Aya Kiguchi, Hitomi Hasebe, Takumi Saito, Taro Shigaki, Etsuko Ikuta, Suzuki Matsuo, Naoto Takenaka, Asami Kumakiri, Shoko Nakahara, Asami Sugiura
MPAA Rating: UK: 18
Running time: 102 min.

(2.5/5)

First off, Robogeisha is not a movie that is made for me. Secondly, I can understand Toronto After Dark playing trailers of the other films that are playing but after having watched a fairly lengthy trailer for Robogeisha three times prior during the festival I felt as if I had already seen 80% of the sight gags that happen in the movie. Given all that I will say that Robogeisha did please the audience. I don’t really get it but everyone who enjoys this style of movie seemed to love it. There are enough site gags and amusing jokes that the movie definitely pleased them. I’ll admit that even though I was tired of the joke by the half way point I was still chuckling every so often when one of the jokes would come up that was not in the trailer. Especially funny was the wheelchair bound man who couldn’t really talk except for in one special case. It was just so crazy that you couldn’t help but giggle. That really is the only real strength of this type of movie. You want to see weird crazy sex blood soaked sight gags.

Without having seen the trailer so many times I might have enjoyed Robogeisha more but as I did I came away mostly bored with having had a few chuckles. If you are a fan of Machine Girl or Tokyo Gore Police you will likely enjoy it but I personally was looking more forward to Alien Versus Ninja which is playing tonight at Toronto After Dark. I knew going in this movie wasn’t for me and it pretty much met my expectations.

Update: I just realized about 20 minutes after having written the review that I never talked about the plot and you know what it doesn’t really matter. You aren’t going to check this one out for the plot. If you must know it involves two sisters. One is a Geisha and the other doesn’t believe she has what it takes to be a Geisha. When a business man seems interested in the non-Geisha sister they fight a bit but then it turns out that the business man wants her because he believes she can be a strong assassin. The two sisters end up competing to be the stronger assassin by converting their bodies into cyborgs. All hell breaks loose and they eventually end up fighting each other and the also the evil businessmen who want to blow up Japan. That’s probably enough of a plot summary. There are other characters that are involved in the plot but like I said you aren’t watching this one for the story.