 Most Extreme Elimination Challenge (Spike) The American dubbing of Japanese movies and TV shows isn't new (What's Up, Tiger Lily? was nearly 40 years ago), but it's a relatively recent development for the masses to latch on to the "super happy fun crazy!" humor of misappropriated Japanese pop culture, the more Engrish the better. Personally, I think the appeal of Japanese weirdculture is its ability to both baffle and bemuse, so really, there's no need to add a layer of Americans poking fun at it to keep it entertaining. This is where Most Extreme fails, in its refusal to let the footage speak for itself. It's funny enough to watch people (Japanese or otherwise) attempt bizarre stunts like running up a manmade hill against an avalanche of fake boulders, or leaping across a series of giant, slick, spinning logs. Inevitably, most contestents fail and spill into a dirty moat, and/or bang their head on a wall or railing. So this show is best watched with the sound off. You simply don't need the contestents introduced as, for example, "a casino salad bar sneeze-guard cleaner." I don't blame Spike TV for trying to spice it up and bring it to some semblance of American comedic sensibility, but the narration is so chock full of lame innuendo and sanitized gross-out humor that they actually make the show much less "extreme" than it could be. Of course, I recognize that most people will continue to find the whole "Those crazy Japanese!" approach entirely clever for years to come, so let them have that, if it's novel to them. I guess it's easier than acknowledging the more hard-to-fathom (and more inherently humorless) appeal of NASCAR or professional wrestling.
Review by La Fée © 2004 |