The lead of “Ultraman: Rising” sure looks like Japan’s iconic red and silver superhero, but fans might have to squint. First introduced in a 1966 TV show about an alien who crashed to Earth, Ultraman is the brainchild of Eiji Tsuburaya, the prolific pop culture titan who also had a talon in the creation of Godzilla and Mothra. Working with Netflix to boost the monster fighter’s international profile, the director Shannon Tindle, who wrote the screenplay with Marc Haimes, puts a too-cute twist on the character, transforming the kaiju brawler into a kaiju father when Ultraman is tasked to raise a 20-foot infant. Baby Gigantron is too big for diapers — and the gases she leaks evacuate city blocks.
Ultraman has as many identities as he has film and TV spinoffs, approximately 130 and counting. Here, for targeted cross-cultural appeal, he’s a Japanese American baseball player named Ken Sato (voiced by Christopher Sean) who transfers from the Los Angeles Dodgers to Tokyo’s Yomiuri Giants as cover for inheriting the Ultraman mantle from his estranged father, Professor Sato (Gedde Watanabe).
The liveliest bits involve a Lois Lane-esque sportswriter named Ami (Julia Harriman) who is unimpressed by this swaggering, Yank-inflected jock who calls everyone “bro.” Yet, the energetic, manga-stylized scenes of bat-swinging and fist-flinging are given short shrift in favor of talky, draggy sequences about parental responsibility that cut from one conversation about exhaustion and sacrifice to another. If Ultraman wants to conquer the world, he’ll have to try something livelier than a cartoon that looks like a kids movie but lurches about like a saccharine family drama.
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