The Drifting Classroom

Hi. I'm on a tear with Obayashi-- this director is great, and I am checking them off.

Hard to beat Hausu, but this review intends to tell people, if that's the only one you've seen, you'll like this one.

Apparently as time got on, Obayashi became less drastic in tone, more "romantic," (although I can see there is a deep emotional thread in his films, especially about young love), and the surrealism turned more into black and white melodrama.

Hausu - School in the Crosshairs - now Drifting Classroom. This is the spectrum from midnight movie weirdness, to weirdness with young love, to young love with sci-fi, quantum mechanics, and a whole hell of a lot of sand.

No crazy visual overlays. But weird sets, bizarre editing, and a muppet that is unsettling to look at. Get in there and vibe!

The filming of it was fun and a great learning experience for me. My family and I watched the premiere on opening night in Tokyo, Japan. The movie is interesting in storyline content, and one that leaves the ending to the viewer. Its Science Fiction content would leave any open minded writer the room to expand and possibly create another world within that the character's are thrust into. It is about a band of kids who attend an international school. An unusal warp gate pulls them into an unknown future, and one that isn't so friendly in the beginning. It deals with a boy who must break away from the ties of being irresponsible, to lead the survivors. As I said, the ending is left to the viewer. And for the time period that the movie was released, left a couple of tears trailing from audience members.

I am seriously biased about this movie as I was in it. My character piggy was a great comical relief as the schools' world became a sandy mess as they were catapulted into the future. So of course I would rate this movie a ten

I guess the movie lives up to the title as the story, plot and characters drift around. You have no idea exactly what is going on. I have been informed it is based on a popular Manga ...where the director toned down a lot of the dark creepy stuff.. remember, this movie does have soem dark creepy stuff happening! The manga is volumes long. They tried to condense the massive story into 2 hours. That usually doesn't work out as in this case.

Would I watch it again, sure. Would I recommend it to anyone.. .maybe. But only because the name Ôbayashi does tell me some effort into making it good is usually there.

I voted 10 for excellent, but let me be clear; this movie is bad in the best possible ways. Almost Manos, Hands of Fate bad. You will laugh your self hoarse. The movie really is confused about itself; it doesn't know whether it is a horror movie or a light-hearted kids movie. And what ever happened to the adults? We only really see one or two die. they just disappear. The plot holes only add to the hilarity. The ending of the movie is the funniest part, though to its poor Japanese writer, it was probably very touching before he translated it to English.

Man, I would love to interview Arthur Johnson or some of the other stars from this movie to see what the bilingual process of movie making is like. That would be A-grade movie blog material.