Well, it's official: Takashi Miike is a tripper. The first thirty seconds of Ace Attorney are akin to having your cerebral cortex slapped brusquely with a salmon soaked in absinthe and badger blood. From there, things mellow out somewhat, but given that this is a decidedly surreal take on Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney as helmed by the director of Ichi the Killer and Audition, this was never going to be a mellow cinema outing.

In the Ace Attorney universe, crime is so rampant that the Japanese legal system has begun carrying out 'bench trials'; basically, you get three days of two attorneys fighting it out, at the end of which a verdict is sprayed forth like hot soy. All of this is done in the most aggressive, theatrical manner possible, and in the Ace Attorney games, you get to bury yourself neck-deep in the thick of things. It's what the legal system would be like if you described it to a fax machine, then fed that fax machine to an AI with a litany of psychological disorders; it looks and feels sort of like law at work, but plays out more like sixteen yelling matches at once.The film dispenses with it's surreal preamble, and then proceedings - court proceedings, that is - are underway. Phoenix Wright, the fresh-faced hero of Ace Attorney is doing what he does best: court stuff. And badly. Ace, played by Hiroki Narimiya, is a well-intentioned but addle-brained rookie, and his efforts in the court are swiftly contrasted against the stylized and, frankly, slightly arousing lawyering style employed by the buttery and charming Miles Edgeworth (Takumi Saito). Things typically found in and around the butt region soon hit the fan, however, and that's when Ace Attorney begins to really take off.Ace Attorney has some fantastic characters. Meaning it has characters from Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, rendered in brilliant, weird, violent and gloriously, stupidly earnest strokes by Miike. Seeing Larry Butz bound around tearfully, or Dick Gumshoe earnestly suck things up a notch is simultaneously confusing and edifying. Moments like these show how it takes a crazy auteur like Miike to fully convey just how bizarre a game about being a lawyer in a corrupt technicolor video game version of Japan should feel.The actual cases in the film are surprisingly meaty, even if you have played Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. There's something dreamlike about the film, and it's all held together by a genuinely engaging and joyfully convoluted labyrinth of intrigue, evidence and a plethora of objections. Oh, and the hair. The glorious, flawless, gleaming hair.Phoenix's hair is perfect. I mean, you could bounce a quarter off it and you'd probably only make it angry by doing so. Also, Miike has captured the key, iconic moments from the games perfectly, including Wright's trademark 'objection!', and the first time you see it, you'll likely spray milk out of your nose. You'll be similarly inclined to violently eject dairy products when Wright, during a recess in a case, wanders around randomly picking up pieces of irrelevant evidence, says what each thing is, then sort of just stands there looking way too happy with himself. The film is riddled with similar examples of how being so charmingly self-aware makes an Ace Attorney movie work.In the end, whether or not you'll enjoy Ace Attorney comes down to how well you can cope with over two hours of cretinous, deadpan, bewigged jackholes facing off against our hero, whilst even the most villagey of village idiots could spot the gaping holes in their arguments, or spot the cruel, knowing glances they throw their clearly guilty clients. It's explosive, high-camp melodrama, but it manages to work both as a legal thriller and a pitch-perfect adaptation of the game. Miike usually makes faster, harder, more visceral films, so this legal drama - over two hours long - doesn't hit the mark consistently, but when it does, it's utterly squee-worthy.