Night is Short, Walk On Girl
0/4
Starring (voices): Kana Hanazawa, Hoshino Gen
Not Rated (probable PG-13 for Language and Sexual Content)
I hated this movie. I despised it. I loathed it. Sitting through it required me to watch it in two chunks, and each time I felt like I had spent 45 minutes in the seventh circle of surreal hell. The plot makes no sense, the characters are annoying, and writer/director Masaaki Yuasa insists on dragging out his unintelligible story with unending metaphors that are either nonsensical or insultingly obvious.
This is a movie where a set up of the plot is impossible. This movie lost me after about five minutes. It follows a girl (Hanazawa) who has a series of nonsensical adventures that would make Wes Anderson jealous, and a dweeby loser (Gen) who has longed her from afar and schemes to be with her. Unfortunately she's too self-centered to notice him and he's too shy to speak to her. It doesn't help that that they're both far too idiotic to exist in even a fantasy like this.
I don't mind surrealism or metaphor in my movies. Nor do I have a negative reaction to movies that don't take place in our reality. I do, after all, adore "Star Wars" and "The Lord of the Rings." But if a movie isn't going to take place in our world, it has to have an anchor so that the audience can become involved. That doesn't happen here. This movie has no internal logic. Or plot. It's just a bunch of surrealistic episodes involving things like: a guy who is known as The Underwear Leader, an obnoxious kid who calls himself The God of the Old Books Market, and a cold that infects the entire city (save for the brainless heroine). No doubt that Wes Anderson is hailing this movie as some sort of underground masterpiece. Which, of course, you're not trendy enough to have heard of.
The two lead characters are just as boring as everyone else. The girl is impossible to accept as real even if Zooey Deschanel played her. She drinks more in a few hours than three frat houses do in a year, then can go to a fair for used books, become the surprise star of a high school play, and somehow manages to survive a cold that has left everyone in bed. The hell? As for the guy, he's constantly coming up with bizarre schemes to get the girl to notice him, but has less success and more humiliation than the Looney Tunes' Coyote. And he is always whining about how he forgot his underwear.
I'm totally not kidding about any of this. Unless I got some of the details wrong, which I'll admit is a possibility. It's not my fault, since it seems to change with every line. Every time I thought I understood something, I was proven wrong. I think. Or maybe my mind just started to rot from all the bizarre surrealism that interrupts the already dreadful story.
An apologist could argue that cultural differences could account for my viscerally negative reaction to this movie. I disagree. The movie had no plot or character development or logic of any sort. And that has nothing to do with differences in culture. But since I'm such a nice guy, I will admit that the comic strip-like animation has a certain amount of charm. If that tempts you to check this one out, just look for images online. You'll have a much better time using your imagination. And you won't have to waste your time and money like I did.
Starring (voices): Kana Hanazawa, Hoshino Gen
Not Rated (probable PG-13 for Language and Sexual Content)
I hated this movie. I despised it. I loathed it. Sitting through it required me to watch it in two chunks, and each time I felt like I had spent 45 minutes in the seventh circle of surreal hell. The plot makes no sense, the characters are annoying, and writer/director Masaaki Yuasa insists on dragging out his unintelligible story with unending metaphors that are either nonsensical or insultingly obvious.
This is a movie where a set up of the plot is impossible. This movie lost me after about five minutes. It follows a girl (Hanazawa) who has a series of nonsensical adventures that would make Wes Anderson jealous, and a dweeby loser (Gen) who has longed her from afar and schemes to be with her. Unfortunately she's too self-centered to notice him and he's too shy to speak to her. It doesn't help that that they're both far too idiotic to exist in even a fantasy like this.
I don't mind surrealism or metaphor in my movies. Nor do I have a negative reaction to movies that don't take place in our reality. I do, after all, adore "Star Wars" and "The Lord of the Rings." But if a movie isn't going to take place in our world, it has to have an anchor so that the audience can become involved. That doesn't happen here. This movie has no internal logic. Or plot. It's just a bunch of surrealistic episodes involving things like: a guy who is known as The Underwear Leader, an obnoxious kid who calls himself The God of the Old Books Market, and a cold that infects the entire city (save for the brainless heroine). No doubt that Wes Anderson is hailing this movie as some sort of underground masterpiece. Which, of course, you're not trendy enough to have heard of.
The two lead characters are just as boring as everyone else. The girl is impossible to accept as real even if Zooey Deschanel played her. She drinks more in a few hours than three frat houses do in a year, then can go to a fair for used books, become the surprise star of a high school play, and somehow manages to survive a cold that has left everyone in bed. The hell? As for the guy, he's constantly coming up with bizarre schemes to get the girl to notice him, but has less success and more humiliation than the Looney Tunes' Coyote. And he is always whining about how he forgot his underwear.
I'm totally not kidding about any of this. Unless I got some of the details wrong, which I'll admit is a possibility. It's not my fault, since it seems to change with every line. Every time I thought I understood something, I was proven wrong. I think. Or maybe my mind just started to rot from all the bizarre surrealism that interrupts the already dreadful story.
An apologist could argue that cultural differences could account for my viscerally negative reaction to this movie. I disagree. The movie had no plot or character development or logic of any sort. And that has nothing to do with differences in culture. But since I'm such a nice guy, I will admit that the comic strip-like animation has a certain amount of charm. If that tempts you to check this one out, just look for images online. You'll have a much better time using your imagination. And you won't have to waste your time and money like I did.
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