Big Dreams Little Tokyo
I was just going through some movies when I stumbled upon a movie called, “Big Dreams Little Tokyo”. It’s a movie released in 2006 which is directed and written by David Boyle. When I saw the title and read the synopsis a bit, I thought why not just get it and watch it since I am a fan of Japanese culture and language it would be fun to watch Japanese culture through an outsiders perspective. I never realised that the movie would be so good.
I will first put the synopsis of the movie here before trying to review it.
The film tells the story of Boyd (played by Boyle), an American with an uncanny ability to speak Japanese. Boyd aspires to succeed in the world of Japanese business but finds himself mostly on the outside looking in. Meanwhile, his roommate Jerome (Jayson Watabe), is a Japanese American who has always felt too American to be Japanese but too Japanese to be American. He aspires to be a sumo wrestler but finds his weight and blood pressure are thwarting his dreams. Together they struggle to find their place in a world where cultural identity is seldom what it seems.
The movie starts of a bit slow and confusing but its actually making a statement. We see Boyd(the protagonist played by Boyle himself)trying hard to sell his book “The power of Words”. The book is supposedly for Japanese people to learn English. He tries to sell the book to many people but is unsuccessful, with only being able to sell one copy to a very big company’s CEO. We also see a Japanese guy who resembles a Sumo Wrestler and he is eating his hearts out. As the story progresses we see people from many different culture who come into contact with Boyd and his desperation to prove himself. His ability to speak Japanese makes him quite unique. The movie also has Mia(Rachel Morihiro) who is the first student of Boyd’s. She meets him in a hospital and goes to him to learn proper English. It’s very much implied that they both like each other but I really loved that they showed no signs of affection other than trying to be close to each other which was kind of romantic.The characters of the Mexican Japanese Chef Andy, CEO Ozu, Book Shop owner Murakami and Jerome/Sakebano actually add lot of different flavours to the movie.On the acting front everyone did a excellent job especially Boyd and Mia. Boyd actually behaved and looked like a white Japanese guy.
When it comes to the technical aspects of the movie, we have to talk about the fact that it was a low budget movie and they were very much dependent on the camera work to make the movie click. The mid close-up shots were used in major part of the movie since it showed a connection between characters and as most of the scenes were in a controlled environment with limited amount of people. When Jerome and Boyd talk outside the house in English the director has made a very good use of the over-the-shoulder shots, giving us the perspective of each of the character. There were some instances where I thought the movie is going to make a mistake but they were totally avoided. One such case was when Boyd carried Jerome to the op-ed, he had left his bag in the car and later when he is going to give the book to Mia, he says that he had left the bag in the car which shows director had taken note of every fine detail in the movie. Even the cycle Boyd uses very much reminds me of cycles you see in Japan. The film avoided wide shots which was understandable considering the tone of the movie. The humour is more or less implied rather than usual slapstick.
Maybe my only problem with the movie was Rachel Morihiro(Mia) looked older than Dave Boyle though it doesn’t matter since they look cute together but still it was always there in back of my mind. Anyways my verdict is that the simplicity of this movie is what makes this movie so amazing. Its definitely worth watch and would have been given a 5/5 if I ever start rating movies.
I will have to search for the DVD of the movie here. Hope I can find it because I hate ordering DVDs online.