After his rapturously received YOUR NAME/’16, this much anticipated next film from Anime-tor Makoto Shinkai is another visual dazzler. (Those lateral cityscape tracking shots!) This one about a runaway teen coming upon the bright lights and high costs of Tokyo where the good-natured boy first falls in with a pair of counter-culture publishers; then falls for a ‘sunshine girl’ with a rare, inexplicable gift for sweeping aside Tokyo’s perpetual rainy gloom to literally let the sun shine in as weather turns Biblically bad. But it's a supernatural talent that comes at a terrible personal cost. It proves a tricky mix to pull off, with Shinkai’s storytelling abilities unable to rise to the occasion. (Where’s Richard Wagner and his sacrificial dames when you need him?) Construction a mess, with blocks of narrative moving forward only by happenstance & coincidence; too many close-call escapes for any one teen protagonist to have; and odd, arbitrary choices on what to explain and what to leave as a mysterious, metaphysic blank. Shinkai’s favored time shifting stratagems (love and time in conflict thru jumps or generational gaps) replaced and less gripping as a technological cautionary tale for the world. (Because it's less personal?) Thoughtful, but unsatisfying, in spite of many felicitous beauties, including a fine score with good Pop tunes from Radwimps.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Runaway boy Hodaka always keeping his copy of CATCHER IN THE RYE nearby. No wonder he’s annoying as Holden Caulfield.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Perhaps writer/director Shinkai would benefit from less autonomy. Meanwhile, YOUR NAME. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/06/kimi-no-na-wa-your-name-2016.html
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