The Live Action Gintama is fun, but you need to be in on the joke

In one scene of the live action Gintama adaptation, one of the characters, Shinpachi, tries to enter a shady looking ship. He tries to do this by bonding with a random shipman about their favorite characters from Space Battleship Yamato. If you have no idea what Space Battleship Yamato is, or the the very Japanese comedy thing at the end of the joke, this joke probably won't land. This goes for most of the movie as well.

Based on a long running manga and anime series, the live action Gintama is based on the Benizakura arc, which is volume 11-12 of the manga. This material was also used as the basis for one of the first Gintama animated movies. It's easy to see why: it's a good way to introduce the main cast, and has a couple of interesting villains.

Gintama started out as and still is a gag manga, albeit now with dramatic elements. It seems appropriate that the movie has Yuichi Fukuda to helm it, as Fukuda has been responsible for well received comedic interpretations of manga such as Hentai Kamen or popular and very funny j-dramas such as The Hero Yoshihiko. Fukuda captures the silly, anachronistic world of Gintama quite well - it's a world that's part advanced technological civilization, part Meiji Restoration era Japan. It's also full of ridiculous things: giant dogs, aliens with animal heads, even giant bird... things in suits. The world is loud and colorful and despite middling CGI, it works for the most part.

Gintama as a manga relies heavily on jokes that draw on Japanese pop culture (even fellow manga being serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump), and here's where I think the film may struggle to find a wider audience outside of its fanbase. Aside from the joke from the first part of the film, there are references to Gundam, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (including a hilarious riff on the limits of legality), Dragonball, and so on. Even the title of the arc is a reference (to the series Bleach; the name comes from the names of two popular Zanpakuto). If one has no idea what these things are, things get confusing really fast.

But Gintama isn't all fun and gags, it also has drama and action. The drama is slightly downplayed in favor of the comedy, but it's still there. It's obvious that under the right circumstances, Gintoki could've ended up like antagonist Shinsuke. The action scenes are quite fun, though they not as kinetic as other samurai action films like Rurouni Kenshin.

I think Gintama is an okay adaptation. It captures the essence of the original and is absurd and funny in the right amounts. However, it requires a certain level of understanding of Japanese culture to fully appreciate.