Nikui an-chikushô

Sadly, I wasn't really feeling this one. It starts with a decent amount of energy and promise, but starts to feel repetitive after the first half, and I think it made its two lead characters too unlikeable - the guy's obnoxious and eventually even abusive, and the girl doesn't feel like a real person, the way she doesn't seem to want to do anything but pursue this jerk.

It's got a watchable first half followed by a tedious, sometimes kind of bad second half. Not the worst thing ever, but certainly a disappointment (it would easily be ranked behind the other two Koreyoshi Kurahara films I've seen so far, Intimidation and I Am Waiting).

There are very few movies that can be called a timeless classic from Japan, or any where else in the world. If Kurosawa's Seven Samurai was the timeless classic from the '50s, this certainly deserves the title from the '60s.

Daisaku Kita (Yujiro Ishihara) is a heart throb idol. He's multi-talented star who has his own radio show, and TV appearances. He has a girlfriend/manager Noriko (Ruriko Asaoka). They have an agreement not to be intimate with each other, but are constantly walking the thin line. One day his friend and associate Ichiro (Hiroyuki Nagato) brings advertisement from news paper seeking for a driver to deliver the owner's jeep to Kyushu. The advertisement stipulates that no delivery fee will be paid to the driver. Curious, Daisaku and Ichiro goes to visit the owner of the Jeep. The owner turns out to be Yoshiko (Izumi Ashikawa) - fiancé of a doctor in an isolated village in Kyushu. The jeep is in much need at his medical facility where transportation is unavailable. Daisaku agrees to deliver the jeep despite the fact that he already has scheduled appearances on TV. Noriko tries to stop him, but his mind is made up. Ichiro seizes the opportunity and creates a documentary of Daisuke's delivery. Noriko is busy trying to put spin control on the scandalous behavior of Daisaku, but isn't succeeding.

The good of this movie is in its first half. Like Breakfast at Tiffanies predicted the coming of party set lifestyle of the '60s in United States, this movie predicts at how Japan's culture will become in the '70s. Lifestyle Daisuke lives is surprisingly contemporary, and even in the 21st century, with few changes in the furniture, his lifestyle is like those of the people living in modern day Japan. In this sense, like so many of other Yujiro Ishihara's movies, the movie predicts future cultural development of Japan.

I'm surprised to realize that they already had color television broadcast when this movie was released in Japan.

Ruriko Asaoka is captured at the height of her beauty, and her role as Noriko was so popular that it created two other spin off movies featuring her role.

A worthwhile social artifact to watch from the early '60s Japan.

A beloved talk show host (Yujiro Ishihara) rejects his increasingly fake-seeming life, shirks his busy schedule, and throws away his non-physical relationship with his manager/girlfriend (Ruriko Asaoka) when he decides to bring to fruition the dreams of his newest human interest story, a woman who has promised her pen pal boyfriend, a doctor who lives in a remote area, that she will deliver her old jeep to him. Asaoka is desperate to keep Ishihara's career intact, so she follows him with a bunch of TV cameras in tow, hoping to at least create some reality television from the situation. Ishihara is sick of it all, though, and does his best to escape. What begins as a sort of romantic comedy turns more desperate and crazy as both Ishihara and Asaoka lose grip of their sanity. I found this movie a tad confusing (let's see if anyone reading this can make out the plot from my description), but it held my interest between the fine performances and good filmmaking. The final 20 minutes are very good, and I think a second viewing might convince me that this is a little better than I thought it was.