Title: Kikujiro Director: Takeshi Kitano Staring: Takeshi Kitano Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 Studio: Sony Pictures Genre(s): Comedy Rated: (For a threatening incident)

“Kikujiro” is a movie that I like to call a well made bore. It seems to exist for no other reason then to look pretty and show off a skilled craft. In this case that skill comes with great cinematography, wonderful music, and intriguing costume designs. This is all great, it’s just the story that halts this film in it’s tracks. And that’s not a good thing seeing as how “Kikujiro” is a road trip movie. The movie revolves around a young boy named Masac, who lives with his grandma in Japan. School is out and all of his friends are going to the beach for the summer, so Masac is facing a dilemma of being lonely throughout the summer. In an act of desperation, Masac goes on a road trip with the brash and rude Kikujiro, a trip where the goal is to find Masac’s mother and meet her for the first time.

Kikujiro isn’t really someone you’d trust to hold an ice cream cone though. The first thing he does is gamble away their traveling money, which results in them spending much of the trip hitchhiking. When it comes time to stop someone and ask for a ride, Kikujiro normally does something stupid that results in either a funny visual gag, or a result so mean-spirited that you actually feel sorry for the person offering the ride. Strangely enough, the payoff of the movie is not the two reaching their destination, but rather the whole round about journey. The problem is, the movie is static and stale most of the time. There are countless scenes where the two just walk for miles, with a beautiful score and scenery in the background. When it comes time for something to happen, Kikujiro does most of the talking, and we find we don’t like him much.

He’s a tad rude and a bit of a git (if you’ll pardon my English). It goes without saying that by the end of the film Kikujiro comes to care for the boy, but he keeps his emotions to himself, preferring to preserve his reputation rather then admit he’s come to care for the young boy. While there are many reasons the film doesn’t work in the long run, I’m going to point out time as a major reason the film fails. Not only are there countless scenes where the characters do nothing but walk and stand around, but in a bizarre move the director decided to film several dream sequences where young Masac dreams of the people he met in medieval costumes and paint, dancing around to what I can only assume are ancient Japanese dances. Maybe in Japan audiences will get the point of these scenes, but I found them to be tedious and pointless (though pretty to look at).

Time is not used well in this movie, and the characters are more eccentric then they are deep. Considering a good hour of this two hour film is filler with nothing happening, no one can tell me that there wasn’t time to develop at least one of these characters. Strange that Kikujiro seems to be the side character in his own movie, a choice that seems odd at best, seeing as how this is the only character to come close to having a deep personality. The movie was directed by Takeshi Kitano, who I hear is known for making violent action films in Japan. From what else I’ve heart, Kitano is sort of the Michael Bay in Japan, and Japanese audiences found this film to be a strange movie for him to make considering his track record. Well, I don’t know of his track record, but I can say that based on this film the man is a talented film maker, he just needed a stronger story for this movie.

- -Review By Kevin T. Rodriguez- -

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