A break in the system

GHOST IN THE SHELL 2 (Mamoru Oshii, Japan, 4)

Probably not the best choice for me to see, as I’m neither much of a science-fiction hound nor an Anime fanboy. This film retells the BLADE RUNNER/ROBOCOP premise of humans being replaced by androids and the existing humans often being part-android, with a plot already familiar from this summer — slave robots rising up and killing their masters (wasn’t Will Smith available to do the voiceover?). GHOST IN THE SHELL has mostly evaporated from my head just three days later, but it had such eye-rollers as namedropping Descartes’ daughter in an effort to put some intellectual whipped cream on what is really only two scoops of 1980s cop-buddy movie (their boss even calls them on the carpet, the bachelor has a cuddly dog … dude-san, please). The sci-fi trope of “questioning reality,” as usual, did nothing for me. I can’t quite put my finger on why Japanese animation, even Miyazaki, has mostly left me lukewarm or cold — it would say it has something to with the flatness of the visual field, except that I love SOUTH PARK and BEAVIS AND BUTTHEAD; it could be the overserious subject matter or perhaps the uninspiring, unmemorable voice characterizations (I didn’t care for SHREK, but Eddie Murphy was brilliant)