| Language: Japanese Director: Takanori Jinnai Running time: 124 min Release year: 2007 |
| Cast: Mirai Moriyama, Rosa Kato, Yoshiko Tanaka, Kei Tani, Kenji Sakaguchi |
Movie Review:
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. |
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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). |
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| { Recommended Japanese Movies } |
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Battle Royale (Batoru rowaiaru) |
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Director: Kinji Fukasaku; Cast: Takeshi Kitano, Shin Kusaka, Ren Matsuzawa, Gouki Nishimura, Shigehiro Yamaguchi, Taro Yamamoto |
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Princess Mononoke (Mononoke Hime): Animated feature film |
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Director: Hayao Miyazaki; Cast: Yôji Matsuda, Yuriko Ishida, Yûko Tanaka, Kaoru Kobayashi, Masahiko Nishimura |
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Cafe Isobe (Jun kissa Isobe) |
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Director: Keisuke Yoshida; Cast: Hiroyuki Miyasako, Riisa Naka, Kumiko Aso, Mari Hamada, Toshihiro Wada |
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Love Exposure (Ai no mukidashi) |
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Director: Sion Sono; Cast: Takahiro Nishijima, Hikari Mitsushima, Atsuro Watabe, Makiko Watanabe, Sakura Ando |
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Memories of Matsuko (Kiraware Matsuko no issho) |
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Director: Tetsuya Nakashima; Cast: Miki Nakatani, Eita, Yusuke Iseya, Teruyuki Kagawa, Mikako Ichikawa, Asuka Kurosawa |
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Still Walking (Aruitemo aruitemo) |
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Director: Keisuke Yoshida; Cast: Hiroshi Abe, Yui Natsukawa, You, Kazuya Takahashi, Shohei Tanaka, Kirin Kiki |
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Tokyo Sonata |
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Director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa; Cast: Teruyuki Kagawa, Kyoko Koizumi, Yu Koyanagi, Inowaki Kai, Haruka Igawa |
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