Wonderful Days

A few words of encouragement.

Wonderful Days probably has some of the best animation in the world, and can rival films like Ghost in the shell, Akira and Princess Mononoke. But the story was poorly written and severely underdeveloped.

I hope to see more from Tin House, and Wonderful Days should not set them back. Hopefully they will learn from this mistake and create classic animation that can rival the likes of Production I.G. or Studio Ghibli.

If Moon - Saeng Kim is reading this, get out there and show us what you're really made of, we know you can do much better. Also hire a team of world class scriptwriters for a change.

6.5 / 10

"Wonderful Days" strives for so much, it's almost a tragedy that it actually achieves so little. The problem with the film isn't that the plot is thin, nor is it that we've seen these ideas before. The term "variations on a theme" exists for a reason.

Rather, the problem lies with the poorly conceived story and characters that get left out in the cold with horrible dialogue and about as much depth as a kiddie pool.

The opening, for instance, tells us of a gigantic, man-made refuge known as ECOBAN, which is owned and operated by the ruling class. ECOBAN runs on pollution, which of course means that ruling class prey on the beleaguered proletariats to create more pollution to sustain ECOBAN. We are, of course, never told -how- ECOBAN manages to transform pollution into a power source, nor are we told why anyone smart enough to build something like ECOBAN would want to create something that necessitates -more- pollution. I presume it is to keep the upper class fed, but seeing as they already had the resources to build something like ECOBAN in the first place....

But I digress. The point is that ECOBAN exists as nothing more than a plot contrivance to set up some admittedly fantastic visual sequences later on. But you wouldn't know that from the way the movie treats it. Given the background, I would gather that ECOBAN was meant to be a symbol of the upper class' greed and arrogance. That's all well and good, but the very idea of ECOBAN is so implausible and the story thread so inadequate that it quickly becomes nothing more than a neat-looking playground.

This is not the film's only shortcoming. The characters are woefully underdeveloped and uninteresting, so much so that right after I watched the film, I could barely remember their names. When they're not fighting, leaping, driving, or shooting, they're spending most of their time occupying the frame, doing and saying things of absolutely no consequence. New friendships and alliances pop up literally out of nowhere, and some characters disappear and reappear as if the writers had forgotten about them and then remembered just 15 minutes before deadline.

It goes without saying that the animation is great. In general, the CG meshes with the 2D animation quite well, and the action sequences are frenetic and imaginative. While the filmmakers might be brilliant action choreographers, however, they are not writers. Not here, anyway.

WONDERFUL DAYS (2003) Directed by Kim Mun-saeng, this is a stunningly designed and rendered flat animation/CG/model hybrid that only wants for a better story. Despite it's box office failure (still the most successful Korean animated film to date I heard), it's bodes well for future endeavours in the genre. At it's core, its about the `haves' in an environmentally-polluted future world plotting to wipe out the `have-nots' so they can replenish the dwindling energy supplies to their self-contained megacity. Fortunately, the have-nots have a brooding outcast on their side who knows how to put things right. The 2-disc Korean DVD is packed with extras, as is an expanded 3-disc Korean DVD. The films does, I might add, improve greatly on repeat viewings. I give it an 8, largely for artistic merit.

Great great movie...tech-wise. Ok, granted it's not the most elaborate or original of movie plots. It's the eternal story about love and jealousy, power and corruption, good and evil but it has got a Miyazaki twist to its story, or at least tries to emulate the master, rather unsuccessfully I might add. The animation is like nothing I have seen before though, and I HAVE seen Final Fantasy. Main problem: the characters are poorly developed, if not at all. And the story doesn't grab you by the collar and throw you in its world, so you're always "aware" of the animation, it being the masterpiece that it is... But again, it's a movie well worth seeing, some shots will even make your jaw drop and eyes bulge, that's how much the scenes are beautifully drawn and animated. The authenticity of the "small" things (rain dropping pattern, eyes watering) is what I personally marvelled at more than anything else. Oh, and an out-of-this-world soundtrack to top it off, with some exquisite pieces that matched the moods perfectly. It was the only thing that really "sucked me in" a few times... All in all, it is a very promising start to all-korean animations.

"Wonderful Day" is mostly an exercise of style over substance: The plot has some interesting elements and a great atmosphere of melancholy...But sadly most of the story feels flat and forgettable (Despite some memorable and beautifully animated sequences) Kind of like "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within", except that this movie is a bit less boring and it have better characters.

The animation and the designs were pretty good (Despite some brief moments where the expressions in the faces of the characters turn a bit awkward) but overall, the combinations of traditional animation, CGI and miniatures have an incredible looking appearance. The sceneries are beautiful and the movements of the characters are pretty fluid and well done.

If only the plot were as good as the animation...Well I guess it could have been a much worse...This could have been something preachy or emotionless (Like "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within") Despite the boring and melodramatic parts of the story, "Wonderful Days" it's something worth watching, at least for the excellent quality of the animation.