Saturday, November 30, 2013

JFF 2013: Blindly in Love review



35 year old public servant Kentaro, has no friends, lives with his parents and his only hobbies are playing Rumble Fish 2, saving his money and his pet frog. His parents join this matchmaking thing between parents and somehow Kentaro ends up meeting with the blind Naoko (Kaho).

THE GOOD

- Seeing Kaho on the big screen. :)

- Very good supporting cast with Osugi Ren and Kuroki Hitomi playing Kaho's parents.

- Pretty funny, especially Kentaro's parents.

- The first half plays like this slow burning character based movie.

THE BAD

- Instead of going the character study route, its goes the more generic romantic comedic/soap opera route. Kaho's character is so underdeveloped and there's a lot that Blindly in Love can talk about in terms of the similarities between the two characters. Can't blame them for going the safe route but meh.

- The Yoshinoya scene should have been the ending but they wanted the pay off for the frog thing which I thought was unnecessary. More character stuff, especially looking at whether both parent's enabled their children's reliance with the Yoshinoya scene would have been better. Even the yariman could have used more screen time.

- Kaho's parents' subplot being unresolved.

THE UGLY

- Having a strong desire to eat some real gyudon and wishing I were back in Japan. I want Tokyo Chikara Meshi gyuyakinikudon right now. :(

SUMMARY

- Crowd pleasing movie with good acting and an uneven third act. I just feel it could have been much more and I'd rather they tried and fail than play safe. Watchable.

Edit: Forgot to mention these two ladies who would not stop talking even when the movie started. Dude next to them told them to be quiet and the women instead of keeping quiet answered him and told him to shut up. Dude overeacted  and got physical, had to be moved to different seat but people who talk in cinemas annoy me.

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