Too Much

My review was written in September 1987 after a screening at Movies at Town Center multiplex in Boca Raton, Florida.

"Too Much" is a feeble comedy for kids about a little girl and her playmate robot's adventures in Japan. Modest Cannon offering is a summertime territorial release.

French writer-director Eric Rochat (who previously helmed "The Story of O, Part II" at the other end of the audience spectrum) has concocted a very flimsy storyline in which cute Bridgette Andersen is in Tokyo with her parents (dad's on a business trip) when "Uncle" Tetsuro (Hiroyuki Watanabe) gives her a prototype robot as a gift. She exclaims "You're too mch", so it's named Too Much, or TM for short.

There follows a series of slapstick misadventures as the robot refuses to leave her when she's due to fly home to America with her family. On the run, the twosome are helped out by a young Japanese boy in avoiding the grasp of evil scientist Prof. Finkel (Char Fontana) and his goonish henchman Bernie (Uganda).

Silly windup is right out of a Gammera monster film: heroes are holed up in a department store with lots of toy robots for a confrontation with riot police, only to be saved by hundeds of Japanese kids showing solidarity with Too Much.

Title amply describes Rochat's treatment of cute heroine Andersen, a pleasant moppet, she becomes grating with sweetness by film's end. Clutzy dialog is not enhanced Joan Laine's puierile narration voiced by the heroine. Scenic Japanese locales are photographed in documentary fashion, with music video-style editin to a peppy score by George S. Clinton. Gags are frequent but unfunny.