Tang

It felt like watching a live action Ghibli movie. The mixture between Western and Japanese, old and new, comedy and character development made for a very interesting story. I decided to watch it because Ninomiya was acting in it. However, watching it made me interested in reading the story it was based on. They were several interesting turns in the blood and I love the happy ending. The character development was enough to make me want to watch the whole movie. There were a couple of times where it was slow but it made sense. In fact I wish it were a longer film so they could develop some of the other characters.

As I sat down here in 2023 to watch the 2022 Japanese movie "Tang", I had never heard about the movie. But I liked the movie's cover right away, and with it being an Asian movie I hadn't already seen, of course I found the time to sit down and watch it.

"Tang" is an enjoyable, light-hearted sci-fi movie about Ken Kasugai (played by Kazunari Ninomiya) whom is unemployed and just gotten thrown out by his wife, when he stumbles upon a quirky, beaten up robot named Tang. So writer Arisa Kaneko put together a rather enjoyable script based on Deborah Install's novel. One can argue for the predictability of Arisa Kaneko's script, for sure, but it still made for an enjoyable viewing.

The acting performances in "Tang" were good. I wasn't familiar with the cast ensemble in the movie. And despite of it being a relatively small cast ensemble, then the actors and actresses carried the movie quite well.

Visually then "Tang" was good. Most of the time the CGI were quite good and looked realistic. But there were a couple of questionable CGI renderings along the way, unfortunately. But the design of Tang was a very nice one, and you immediately take a liking to the quirky little robot.

"Tang" is a movie that can be enjoyed by the entire family, because there is something for kids and adults alike to be enjoyed here. Thumbs up to director Takahiro Miki on that accomplishment.

My rating of "Tang" lands on a six out of ten stars.

This is very obviously a kids movie. The robot (Tang) is cute and lovable enough. Children will probably re-watch this just for Tang. Some adults may enjoy this if they can handle the cute overload.

Two plot issues: near the end of the movie it becomes difficult to tell who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. There is also far too much emphasis on the relationship between the man and robot at a critical moment when the emphasis should have been on the man and his wife. Serious conceptual flaw there. (You'll just have to watch it to understand.)

I wouldn't really recommend it for adults unless you enjoy children's films. For children it's fine. Younger children may be somewhat frightened by one of the fight scenes near the end due to a large and menacing robotic arm. Other than that it's pretty harmless.

Having read the book, and watched part of the stage musical adaption, I was super excited for this film adaption. There are quite a few differences to the book in terms of characters and setting but tang is exactly how I visioned him. Ken was brilliant and some of the smaller nods to the book reminded me of my childhood. The story is simple but for a perfect reason. It doesn't follow the normal of a robot movie which is what makes it so loveable because you fall in love with a robot and its human instead of fearing it and hating humans. Overall I would recommend this for family movie lovers and others need to seriously read the book.

Setting: We're in the not-so-distant future, where people own various types of fancy robots (basically the only futuristic aspect here, other than lots of neon-light adverts here and there). Most of the story takes place in Japan, but they also briefly go to China (which is very quick and easy to do in the future, apparently).

Basic storyline: A man and a woman live together, but man does not currently have a job, and woman pays for everything, which makes her lose faith in their relationship. Suddenly a robot appears in their backyard, and man tries to find out how to get rid of it. But it's not so easy, and he decides to keep it until he can find the original owner. Along comes some scientists that help him out, and he also becomes more friendly with the robot, as it's kinda cute.

Review: First of all, the movie is clearly aimed at kids, as the robot is very cute and child-like, so they're naturally bound to go "awww" whenever seeing it. But even with that in mind, the story is so clichéd and predictable, that I presume most movie-savvy kids will also be bored watching this (and it's probably not a movie you'd want to see more than once either), as it's at least half an hour too long. Some trimming (especially of the ending and post-story) would have helped it a lot! But as it's based on a book, they probably tried to get as much from the origin-story as they could, which is applaudable, even though the movie became a bit long in the tooth. But fans of the novel will probably be pleased - unfortunately I have not read it, which might be a reason I was not so thrilled with the story here.

Verdict: I saw this movie on a flight from Japan (flying with JAL Airlines), and it helped me very much falling asleep, which was good! And it was a fine "waking up"-movie the next morning too, as you don't need to pay much attention in order to able to follow the story. But this is not a movie I would otherwise recommend, unless perhaps you (or your child) have a fetish for robot-movies maybe.

Comparison: Kind of like "Wall-E (2008)" meets "Short Circuit (1986)" meets "Beethoven (1992)" (just with a robot instead of a dog). But all of those three movies were much better than this one. Still, a passable one-view timekiller though, so 5/10.