Solidly put together film answers the long unanswered question what if famed Japanese director Ozu had lived long enough to tackle the foibles of internet hackers in his films??? What starts out as both a quiet domestic family drama about a college girl who needs to find a boy to escort her back to her grandmother's 90th birthday celebration lest her family think she isn't being cared for...turns into a movie about this hacker's attempt to overtake well everything in cyberspace more or less. (References are made to how many people's identities are being stolen, and a reference is made as to how the hacker could conceivably impersonate the president and get access to nuclear launch codes.) The chaos that the hacker brings ends up wrecking havoc in the real world and ends up infringing on the supposed to be quiet family together weekend--as it becomes more and more clear that the stuff happening in cyberspace may just have a couple of things to do with the family getting together that very weekend. (The boy of course whom we know is painfully shy, and great at math will figure prominently of course in the saving of the world soon enough.) That's about as much plot as I'd wanna give--but its also as much as I think i could possibly give--because to go into specific details about what or how all of this chaos happens--and what the people in the film do to combat the hacker in cyberspace would prob be hard for me since i knew so, so little about what they were actually doing. I got the broad ideas and i always knew what they were doing...but i could not begin to tell you exactly what it was they were doing...and yet it did not hamper my enjoyment of the film overall much to my relief.
Even if you know next to nothing about the going ons in cyberspace, it is definitely still possible to enjoy this film as a cute film about an extended family reuniting for their beloved grandmother's birthday. There are the usual family arguments, tragic back stories, and quirky characters that generally occupy these kinds of films, and the 2 main protagonists are quite appealing characters as presented here. It can also be seen as how the family unit pulls together in times of crisis--even in this crazy internet era we live in where entire lives can be lived out in a virtual world, and chaos can be wrecked as easily there as it could in the real world, the family dynamic is the most important one, and that whole pulling together of the family even by members who don't quite understand exactly what's going on--just that something monumentally important is going on, and that they have to band together or risk their potential last moments on earth being split apart. The film's gentle humor and humanist spirit are pure and traditional recalling the various family dramas of Ozu even if the technology and lingo are modernistic cyberpunk.
Koi Koi. The film has a good sense of humor to it as well---getting laughs out of good old fashioned awkwardness or certain juxtapositions of different things happening at the same time. (this entire cybercrisis is happening at the same time the younger members are watching this much beloved local baseball team playing for the championship--and both the baseball game and the cybercrisis go down to the wire and into extra innings if you will.) Its a good look at modern life versus traditional life and how the two can (and should) exist with one another. (the traditional family and lifestyle is big and accepting enough to adept to any new style of living so long as the people within the family can still band together at the end of the day.) The only thing about the film is that in the last half hour or so when the heroes are putting their plan to save civilization into action--i had little idea what they were actually doing in order to save everything--however i knew it had something to do with a big showdown involving the card game Koi Koi (???) which to someone who doesn't know anything about the game itself reminded me more or less of my grandmother playing mahjong's when i was much much younger. it just goes to show you that the film's embrace of traditional values is even included within the way civilization is going to be saved---it ends up being saved by a game learned by your grandparents as a youngster.
Even if you know next to nothing about the going ons in cyberspace, it is definitely still possible to enjoy this film as a cute film about an extended family reuniting for their beloved grandmother's birthday. There are the usual family arguments, tragic back stories, and quirky characters that generally occupy these kinds of films, and the 2 main protagonists are quite appealing characters as presented here. It can also be seen as how the family unit pulls together in times of crisis--even in this crazy internet era we live in where entire lives can be lived out in a virtual world, and chaos can be wrecked as easily there as it could in the real world, the family dynamic is the most important one, and that whole pulling together of the family even by members who don't quite understand exactly what's going on--just that something monumentally important is going on, and that they have to band together or risk their potential last moments on earth being split apart. The film's gentle humor and humanist spirit are pure and traditional recalling the various family dramas of Ozu even if the technology and lingo are modernistic cyberpunk.
Koi Koi. The film has a good sense of humor to it as well---getting laughs out of good old fashioned awkwardness or certain juxtapositions of different things happening at the same time. (this entire cybercrisis is happening at the same time the younger members are watching this much beloved local baseball team playing for the championship--and both the baseball game and the cybercrisis go down to the wire and into extra innings if you will.) Its a good look at modern life versus traditional life and how the two can (and should) exist with one another. (the traditional family and lifestyle is big and accepting enough to adept to any new style of living so long as the people within the family can still band together at the end of the day.) The only thing about the film is that in the last half hour or so when the heroes are putting their plan to save civilization into action--i had little idea what they were actually doing in order to save everything--however i knew it had something to do with a big showdown involving the card game Koi Koi (???) which to someone who doesn't know anything about the game itself reminded me more or less of my grandmother playing mahjong's when i was much much younger. it just goes to show you that the film's embrace of traditional values is even included within the way civilization is going to be saved---it ends up being saved by a game learned by your grandparents as a youngster.