Aug

5

2008


Movie: Smile / Sumairu seiya no kiseki
Release Date: December 15, 2007
Country: Japan
Director: Takanori Jinnai
Starring: Mirai Moriyama, Rosa Kato
Runtime: 124 min
Editor Rating: 5.5
Users Rating: 8 1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars6 Stars7 Stars8 Stars9 Stars10 Stars (9 votes)

Loading ... Loading …



Straight from the colorful labs of Fuji TV comes “Smile,” a cheery film centered around a rag tag group of children hockey players (known as the Smilers) and their tap dancing coach who has never played hockey before. Why is a tap dancer coaching a hockey team you ask? Simple really, the tap dancer Sano (Mirai Moriyama) visits the home of his fiance. He is about to ask her father for permission to marry her, but the father rebuffs the idea before Sano can even ask. Then his girlfriend, Shizuka (Rosa Kato), mentions that Sano was a former professional hockey player in Canada. This intrigues her father because he owns a hockey rink and needs a coach for the arena’s youth hockey team. The father states in no uncertain terms that he will only give his approval if Sano coaches the team to victory.

And with this promising start, “Smile” gives the impression that it could be the next Swing Girls/Ping Pong/Waterboys type of film. Somewhere around the middle portion of the film reality settles in and you realize that “Smile” will come in several notches below those comedy classics.

As mentioned earlier “Smile” is a Fuji TV produced film and some of the plot twists found in “Smile” smacks of the melodrama found in television dramas. Yup if you haven’t guessed by now I’m talking about terminal illness. And in case you haven’t watched a Japanese melodrama before you should know that when terminal illness strikes it usually occurs to someone young and attractive. This time around the victim is Reina (Anri Okamoto), a girl that skates at the ice rink where the Smilers practice and girlfriend to their best player Masaya. Before you can say “Crying out Love for 1 liter of tears!” we learn that Reina has leukemia and her condition quickly deteriorates. Cheap way to pull on the heartstrings to say the least.

Mirai Moriyama plays the hockey coach Shuhei Sano. Like the rest of the film, Mirai Moriyama charmed for the first half of the film, but became more annoying as the movie progressed. The shtick with the hockey coach tapping his feet while watching his players worked early on, but when the coach did all out tap dances during actual hockey games it was like “OK that was funny the first coupe of times now please stop.” It didn’t help that Sano wore nicely tailored suits that were annoyingly hemmed too high (”what tap dancers have to wear high waters to tap dance?”).

The actual hockey games had moments of interest but more often they felt overlong and repetitive. Subtle use of CG graphics did help when used. During the Smilers finale match with the Thunderbirds the odd nature of “Smile” really came about. Ronald McDonald and the golden arch looms in the background in an obnoxious product placement. The song of choice during this scene is the Ramones “Do You Remember Rock N Roll Radio?,” a song that sounded as out of place as did the Red Hot Chili Pepper tune did in Death Note. Imagine that you like apples and oranges, does that mean you’ll like apples and oranges together?

While “Smile” gives a valiant effort to make you smile, the abundance of cheap tricks and repetitive gag turns the once promising film into a ho-hum film by the time end credits roll around. If you do find yourself losing interest you can always try to keep track of all the cameo appearances by well known actors (Koichi Sato, Hiroshi Tamaki, Takashi Tsukamoto, Sachie Hara, Susumu Terajima etc.). Indicative of the comedies Fuji TV produces, “Smile” comes in somewhere between “Bubble Fiction:Boom or Bust” (good) and “Check it Out, Yo!” (bad).

Cast:
Mirai Moriyama - Shuhei Sano (Hockey coach)
Rosa Kato - Shizuka Yamaguchi
Moro Morooka - Shizuka Yamaguchi’s father
Yoshiko Tanaka - Yukie Inotani
Kei Tani - Kunio Imaizumi
Kenji Sakaguchi - Masaya Inotani
Anri Okamoto - Reina Shinohara
Rikiya - Coach Shinichiro Tsurugi
Saya Takagi - Reina’s mother
Jiro Sato - Mr Serisawa (teacher)
Hiroshi Tamaki - Mr. Tamaki (teacher)
Natsuki Harada
Takashi Tsukamoto
Yutaka Matsushige
Naoko Iijima
Susumu Terajima
Koichi Sato
Kumiko Mori
Sachie Hara

If you like this movie you may enjoy: Swing Girls, Ping Pong, Bubble Fiction: Boom or Bust



[Slashdot] [Digg] [Reddit] [del.icio.us] [Facebook] [Technorati] [Google] [StumbleUpon]

2008 Movie Reviews, Japanese Movies, Movie Reviews, Movies |

Comments

Name (required)

Email (required)

Website

Leave a response