G-Saviour - The Movie

amazon.com g-saviour: the movie is an oddity: an american live-action film made to celebrate the 20th anniversary of gundam, one of the most popular and successful franchises in anime history. although yoshiyuki tomino's mecha show actually debuted on japanese television in 1979, it was the three feature-length compilations of the series released in 1981-82 that made gundam a hit. the programs that followed are sprawling sci-fi epics that focus on teenagers whose psychic abilities enable them to pilot the splendidly designed robot-suits. the plot of g-saviour, in which an evil general tries to destroy a mysterious enzyme that could end world hunger, is no hokier than many of the animated gundam adventures. but the characters are all adults, and the turgid romance, in which a woman precipitates a war over her pilot-boyfriend's affections, lands with a thud. the film lacks the scope and brilliant design work of the anime series: despite the numerous cg effects by digital muse, g-saviour feels like an undistinguished movie-of-the-week. rated 13 up: violence, minor profanity. --charles solomon