Ota, Kobayashi and Nagai are three workers at an electrical company which normally makes vacuum cleaners and the like; their boss assigns them to make a robot to enter into a robotics show, more as an advertisement for his company than anything else. The hapless workers are able to come up with a robotic-looking suit, but can't make it do anything and with less than a week to go, they're in despair when after spilling a soft drink on the computer keyboard, the suit goes haywire and leaps out of a window, shattering into its component parts and nothing more. The three have no choice, really, but to advertise for an actor to wear the suit, the primary requirement being that the person have the proper measurements to fit the suit. Their first choice, unfortunately, turns out to be allergic to metal and so they turn to their second pick, the elderly Suzuki (Shinjiro Igarashi aka Mickey Curtis, a one-time real-life rock star), who has recently retired and has nothing to do. Suzuki's family tunes him out, the caregivers and other clients at a senior centre think he's getting senile, and this one-time-only gig will give him something to do. But while at the exhibition, he dazzles the crowd with his antics and when he saves a spectator from a falling pole, well, he's a hero and everybody wants him. But how long can our three researchers keep up the pretence, and how much can they control the increasingly undependable Suzuki, particularly since the young woman he saved has become increasingly enthusiastic about this "new robot"? This is a very funny film that manages to skewer geekdom while celebrating it. One of the best scenes has our trio giving a "lecture" to some college students in which various kids ask how they managed to get the robot to be able to do this and that; they cleverly turn the question around, asking what the students think they did, and busily take notes as the students proceed to explain how to build a robot - that scene alone is priceless! There are no real bad guys here, and nothing terrible happens to anybody, but the sheer premise of the film sets the audience to laughing from almost the first minute, and as for the ending, well, let's just say it was unexpected! Good fun, and worth looking for!
