Birigyaru

A lots of teenage and coming of age movies don't touch with the subject of school materials. Usually they just focus on romantic relationship or broken hearted experience in high school. Well. You can expect differently from this one.

Sayaka Kudo, a pariah high school girl that only knew how to enjoy her life instead of studying, suddenly face the challenge to enter one of the most prestigous university in Japan. She had only one year to make that happened. Her mother asked help from the golden heart tutor Tsubota-san to assist Sayaka in her impossible quest. Can they make their dream come true?

There are some out there who believe that mainstream films can never be artistically great or entertaining. I am certainly not one of them - and this film definitely proves it.

True, it's not groundbreaking by any means. But is it interesting? Is it emotionally gripping? And most importantly, is it memorable? This is all three, and more.

Taking literally the best parts of what characterizes Japanese film - over the top acting, narrative exposition, classic tugs at the heart-strings moments and melodramatic long pauses - this film pulls great screen writing, direction and acting to produce what has to be the best two hours to come out of mainstream Japanese cinema in a very long time.

As a student who is aiming the exams to university, I was encouraged by this a lot, I mean, really a lot!

Well, this movie does not have much rank here, I suppose it is because people living under Western education system or examination system cannot understand properly that pressure of university-entry exams in Asian countries like Japan.

In my opinion is a really excellent movie, the relationships between the characters are also touching such as family and friends...

So I rated 10

Believe in your efforts!

It started out kind of dumb as the main character, a stupid but cute airhead bimbo, was set up. But it did get better and a little deeper than it originally seemed. It's quite a cheeful and positive movie with some funny and charming moments.

I inevitably compare this film with the former TV show Doragon-Sakura and its sequel. That's the reason why I chose to watch it.

The fact is, this film is not as good as Doragon-Sakura in many ways. The most serious one is the image of that key teacher. Kanji Sakuragi was so cool and determined in Doragon-Sakura, while in this film, the teacher was so weak and unimpressed. This disappointed me the most.

Another reason why this film performed poorer than DS is the length I guess. After all, 10 episodes showed a greater advantage than 2 hours in terms of atmosphere and depth.

All in all, this film didn't successfully transfer the spirit I needed originally. What a pity.