I Survived a Japanese Game Show

There's plenty of humiliation in I Survived a Japanese Game Show as well, but there it's so varied and strange--and very much in keeping with what I understand of those shows--that it doesn't get repetitive or annoying.

I Survived a Japanese Game Show took a simple enough concept—importing Americans to compete on a bizarre game show in Tokyo—and turned it into a boring, American-style reality show, complete with confessional segments and backstage scenes.

It’s rather like a “Saturday Night Live” skit that should have stayed a skit and not wound up on the big screen.

The Japanese fascination with absurd stunts (dressing two players as huge bugs and having them splat against a wall, for example) and public humiliation as good TV fun has a rather acrid taste stripped of cultural context.

In the light of summer television, civilization does not seem to have a pulse. It looks quite dead indeed.