Takeshi Kitano plays Kikujiro, a combative, ne'er-do-well drifter who is badgered into taking a young boy, Masao, from Tokyo to Toyohashi to meet his mother--for the first time ever.
Someone with a little money and with what passes these days for common sense could get there in maybe an hour by bullet train. Kikujiro and Masao take the, umm, scenic route.
Anyone who has spent much time in Japan may be feeling "natsukashii" (nostalgia...well, not quite) well before the halfway point. What would, with a sensible adult guide, be an utterly forgettable day trip, is stretched out into a week or more, and becomes a complete summer vacation for Masao, with all that this entails in Japan--the summer festival, swimming in the ocean, the suika-wari game of blindfolded watermelon-bashing (with an amusing variation here), and so on. The "summer vacation" aspect is emphasized by the intertitles introducing each segment, which are presented as photos, complete with captions, that the boy might have taken on a real vacation.
The basic structure--the adult-child road trip--has been done before, of course (and a trailer for Central Station is included on the DVD). Some of the concerted attempts by the motley collection of adults to amuse Masao in the last quarter of the movie are rather too contrived. But this is, on the whole, a good-hearted movie (...somewhat rare for Kitano) that managed to make all of us smile.
...really, though, the title should have been "Masao no natsu", Masao's Summer Vacation.
Someone with a little money and with what passes these days for common sense could get there in maybe an hour by bullet train. Kikujiro and Masao take the, umm, scenic route.
Anyone who has spent much time in Japan may be feeling "natsukashii" (nostalgia...well, not quite) well before the halfway point. What would, with a sensible adult guide, be an utterly forgettable day trip, is stretched out into a week or more, and becomes a complete summer vacation for Masao, with all that this entails in Japan--the summer festival, swimming in the ocean, the suika-wari game of blindfolded watermelon-bashing (with an amusing variation here), and so on. The "summer vacation" aspect is emphasized by the intertitles introducing each segment, which are presented as photos, complete with captions, that the boy might have taken on a real vacation.
The basic structure--the adult-child road trip--has been done before, of course (and a trailer for Central Station is included on the DVD). Some of the concerted attempts by the motley collection of adults to amuse Masao in the last quarter of the movie are rather too contrived. But this is, on the whole, a good-hearted movie (...somewhat rare for Kitano) that managed to make all of us smile.
...really, though, the title should have been "Masao no natsu", Masao's Summer Vacation.