I'm Japanese, and I enjoyed bits of this movies as I felt somewhat nostalgic of depictions of every-day life in Japan (as I have not lived there for some years) but... the movie is almost completely devoid of any plot (sans some lame attempt to spice up the plot in the mid-way through with a young female character awkwardly introduced), or ANY redeeming quality (interesting discussions, funny dialogues, etc), but NOTHING..
I cannot imagine anybody not falling into sleep unless they were serious Japanophiles, which, I admit, there are many in the world nowadays (which may explain the movie's high rating). If this movie didn't take place in my home country, and took place in say Canada for example, I (or many others) would've stopped watching it in the midway through.
Some of the sparsely written dialogues are actually so poorly written and cringe-worthy in Japanese that I actually wished the movie was entirely dialogue-free.
I guess I should mention that the music choice is not bad with a typical hipster collection of classic rock, which has absolutely nothing to do with the film's story except that the main character collects tapes (a little story line of which also goes absolutely nowhere). It is however a neat trick to give many people who get easily manipulated, a vague feeling of watching something profound while nothing is going on.
These superficial visual and auditory niceties in this movie remind me a lot of another artsy movie about Japan "Lost in Translation", with similar superficial & deceptive effects on easily-influenced viewers, but that one actually had some resemblance of story, as opposed to this one, and the dialogue in that movies were miles better than this one.
All in all, this is a nice visual tour of Tokyo/Japan, for Japanophiles who crave to watch EVERYTHING about Japan (including toilets!!), but little else in terms of ... well anything.
Just to be clear, I do love some slower-paced movies (ex. Ozu's Tokyo Story, for example) WITH a good story, but this is not it.
I cannot imagine anybody not falling into sleep unless they were serious Japanophiles, which, I admit, there are many in the world nowadays (which may explain the movie's high rating). If this movie didn't take place in my home country, and took place in say Canada for example, I (or many others) would've stopped watching it in the midway through.
Some of the sparsely written dialogues are actually so poorly written and cringe-worthy in Japanese that I actually wished the movie was entirely dialogue-free.
I guess I should mention that the music choice is not bad with a typical hipster collection of classic rock, which has absolutely nothing to do with the film's story except that the main character collects tapes (a little story line of which also goes absolutely nowhere). It is however a neat trick to give many people who get easily manipulated, a vague feeling of watching something profound while nothing is going on.
These superficial visual and auditory niceties in this movie remind me a lot of another artsy movie about Japan "Lost in Translation", with similar superficial & deceptive effects on easily-influenced viewers, but that one actually had some resemblance of story, as opposed to this one, and the dialogue in that movies were miles better than this one.
All in all, this is a nice visual tour of Tokyo/Japan, for Japanophiles who crave to watch EVERYTHING about Japan (including toilets!!), but little else in terms of ... well anything.
Just to be clear, I do love some slower-paced movies (ex. Ozu's Tokyo Story, for example) WITH a good story, but this is not it.