In “The Host,” a dysfunctional family of quirky adults would sacrifice anything for their little girl — including putting up with each other and jumping as a group onto a mini-van in motion. Sound familiar? But today’s low-budget Asian import has something else to distinguish it from last month’s Oscar-nominated best picture besides the Korean language: a giant, mutant, man-eating amphibian!

Call it “Little Miss Godzilla.”

More than just a guilty pleasure, despite its relatively cheesy production values compared with Hollywood productions, “The Host” is a subtext-laden, satiric, heartfelt and even somewhat scary monster mash with a side order of kimchee.

Director and cowriter Bong Joon-ho infuses the proceedings with characters to care about and sociopolitical metaphor. Its chief victim is plucky, motherless 13-year-old heroine Hyun-Seo (Ko A-Sung). She’s snatched and squirreled away by a huge hostile beastie. The back-flipping, squid-faced lizard emerges from the Han River as a result of American-induced formaldehyde pollution.

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Hyun-Seo’s shiftless father Kang-Du (Song Kang-Ho) and the rest of her family — including regret-filled granddad Hee-Bong (Byun Hee-Bong); unemployed college grad and former political protester Uncle Nam-Il (Park Hae-Il); and, her young aunt Nam-Joo (Bae Doo-Na), a self-sabotaging archery champ — want to find and rescue the beloved child. Unfortunately, they are the focus of an international conspiracy theory that suggests that the critter is a host (hence the title) of a deadly virus, and the family’s contact with it make them prime infectors.

Thus, the adults in the surprisingly loving family have to elude the overreacting South Korean government and the American occupiers in the process of trying to save Hyun-Seo, destroy the monster and overcome their individual neuroses.

Americans are the secondary villains in the movie. But the creature seems to represent what some South Koreans apparently perceive to be the virulent result of our country’s ongoing military presence there. And in light of recent worldwide paranoia about the SARS virus, bird flu, and terrorist usage of biological and other weapons of mass destruction, the sly screenplay comments on some real issues in the context of cult horror goofiness.

As a scare-fest that also makes you think a little, “The Host” is the most.

‘The Host’

4/5 stars

Starring: Song Kang-Ho, Ko A-Sung

Director: Bong Joon-ho

Rated R for creative violence and language