ウォーターボーイズ/ Water Boys

(Movie Review)

It was movie night with the co-workers this past Thursday night, and surprisingly enough this ended up being the movie that was chosen. (Turns out some of the new crew are Japanese Cinema buffs).

Not to be confused with the Adam Sandler movie, this is a Japanese movie about a boys synchronized swimming movie. It came out about the time I first arrived in Japan back in 2001, and it was a huge hit domestically back then. I remember seeing all sorts of advertisements when it was in the theaters, and since that time it's been shown on TV ad nauseum. I've seen parts of it on TV before, but I've never been able to sit through the whole thing before, so I figured I should add it to my new movie reviews.

I put on a good face in front of the rest of the gang, but I've got to admit this isn't my favorite movie. Part of it may be due to the fact that at the time the first time I saw parts of this I was still adjusting to Japanese humor, and the bad first impression has stuck. Everybody else in the room last night loved this movie, so take my opinion with a grain of salt (as always).

The plot of this movie (apparently loosely based on a true story) is a bunch of guys decide to form a synchronized swimming team at their high school.

Get it? Their on a synchronized swim team, but their guys!! That's pretty much the whole joke. They are shown in various stages of ridiculousness and desperation throughout the movie, but it's pretty much a one note gag stretched out over a two hour period.

Of course this is Japan so movies where people intentionally do socially awkward things that make them stand out takes on a bit more significance and bucks the culture a little more. (Some people say the cult hit "Shall We Dance?" started this phenomenon). But now that these kind of movies have become popular the Japanese studios have begun cranking them out. I can name several Japanese movies from the past few years that have a similar plot.

For that matter, this movie isn't too far off the kind of film that Hollywood regularly churns out. A movie about a group of misfits who join together in a team (with an eccentric half crazy coach) and succeed against all odds. This movie even steals the gag from the Karate Kid movies, about how you think the coach is a slave driver who's just using you as free labor and then when you finally complain about it you find out that he was actually teaching you valuable skills through the cleaning.

In order to further emphasize the fish out of water element (no pun intended) of this boys synchronized swimming team, the writers develop a long and desperate plot to explain that these boys really don't want to do synchronized swimming, their just kind of forced into it by events.

You see....(take a deep breath here)...There is an all boys school where there is only one member of the swim team then a pretty young new woman teacher joins the school faculty and announces that she will be coaching swimming and all of a sudden everyone goes out for swimming but it turns out the female teacher is actually a synchronized swimmer and she simply forgot that a boys school wouldn't have a synchronized swim team and so she tries to convince the boys to join a synchronized swim team for the school festival. They try and bow out of it, but then the rest of their classmates scoff at their lack of commitment, so they decide to give it a try. But at this point the basketball team is using the pool for fly fishing, and when they empty the pool and the fish, then they get in trouble and now they have to do a successful synchronized swimming performance to try and recoup the money...(gasp).

It just gets more and more ridiculous. You could argue that this zaniness is all part of the comedy, but I think there's a little desperation on the part of the writers as well.

I would be amiss to add that this film didn't have its moments, and that I did catch myself laughing a couple times while watching, but on the whole it didn't do a lot for me.

Link of the Day

Via "This Modern World"

Here’s some great Chris Rock stand up about Iraq. I don’t know if it’s new, but it’s new to me.

Waterboys: Movie Review (Scripted)