Cutie Honey is a frenzied, cutesy, fantastical superhero movie dealing with a very human-like android (the girl Honey) trying to make her way in a world that doesn't quite understand her. Of course, it helps that she's gorgeous - the opening scene of the film shows her first in the bathtub and then running down a Tokyo street in her underwear - and she has incredible super-powers by way of 'the I System', basically a choker on her neck that can transform her and anything around her. She touches two fingers to the little heart on the choker and shouts, "Honey… Flash!" and becomes her super-heroic self.

Honey's uncle has been kidnapped by a group of weird super-villains and their fanatical followers called Panther Claw; the group was also responsible for her father's (that is, creator's) death some time before. Panther Claw is led by Sister Jill (played by a man, giving an extra odd dimension to the character), an immortal, flesh-and-plant hybrid with incredible powers. Honey teams up with a super-straight-laced female police chief and a wacky male investigator to bring down the villains and rescue her uncle, and presumably the rest of the world also.

Cutie Honey was made in an interesting style, probably the closest any movie will get to being part fantasy film, part music video, part Japanese cartoon (or, 'manga'). In fact, during certain action sequences the effects become very manga-like in their freneticism and drawings are occasionally substituted for people in some effects-heavy scenes. Characters aren't just punched; they're thrown across the room like rag dolls. Explosions take out entire city blocks, characters leave their bodies' impressions in walls when slammed into them, etc. The villains - not only Sister Jill but also the four lesser villains, Gold, Black, Crimson, and Cobalt Claws - are way over the top, not only in costume but also in powers and personalities.

The movie must have been marketed to Japanese kids and teenagers, considering the amount of music that pervades the film, without overwhelming it. The soundtrack, thankfully, is a sort of timeless mix of styles - some tunes sounded like they would fit into a 60's spy film seemlessly, while others were definitely more modern. And there were a couple of scenes that resembled nothing so much as music videos - especially one where Honey is wandering the city, pensively, with a different change of costume every few seconds; the lyrics were helpfully printed right on-screen for the benefit of the viewer (and, no doubt, the soundtrack's promoters). Even one of the villains breaks into song - backed up by a quartet of henchmen playing violins.

Cutie Honey is a fast, colorful comic book on film. Adults may roll their eyes at the villains, or the way Honey tends to assume innocent/sexy poses no matter the occasion; but, who cares. It's a lot of fun, and one can enjoy it without taking it seriously. The film doesn't even take itself seriously - many of its jokes are are self-referential. Even Go Nagai, Honey's original creator in the comics, makes an appearance when Honey is knocked backward by a villain's attack and lands with her buttocks in his windshield. Naturally, she takes time to say hello.