Kame wa igai to hayaku oyogu

After having read the reviews on Amazon, and of course as being a fan of Asian movies, then I decided to buy "Turtles are Surprisingly Fast Swimmers".

Now having sat through it, I must say that the reviews that I read seemed to belong to an entirely other movie, because I didn't find it as interesting as they did. Sure the story is not boring, but it was rather uneventful and really didn't go anywhere. There was no particular climax to the story, and it seemed far longer than an hour and a half.

The acting in "Turtles are Surprisingly Fast Swimmers" was adequate enough, though there wasn't any particularly interesting performances in the movie. The best performance was by the lead actress, Juri Ueno, however.

I was expecting more from the movie, after having read it being about spies. The plot never really fully struck home and shone through on the screen. Hand on heart, then I sit here and think that this movie was basically rather plain and unnecessary.

Now, having seen "Turtles are Surprisingly Fast Swimmers", the DVD will be bagged, tagged and placed on the shelf, most likely never ever to be seen again. It just didn't have that much appeal.

This film's main attraction is Juri Ueno whose effortless charisma and charm make the film quite watchable if somewhat uneventful.

Ueno plays Suzume, a bored housewife who decides to train as a spy at the hands of a middle-aged couple. Some scenes are extremely effective, such as Suzume's attempt to order something so normal that the waitress won't remember what she ordered, but they are the exception rather than the norm.

The films moves along smoothly enough, including a de-rigeur chaotic climax with which the film concludes.

The film is enjoyable enough. Ueno is always a pleasure to watch, and the quiet charm of the film leaves you with a smile on your face.

Writer/director Satoshi Miki offers an amusing tale of a vapid housewife who is rescued from the monotony of feeding a turtle for her tanshin funin husband by being recruited as a spy for an unstated foreign power. Life gains meaning as she strives to hone her until now taken-for-granted ordinariness.

Juri Ueno as Suzume Katakura keeps it fairly reigned in, reacting with gasp of incredulity to the slightly surreal mayhem unleashed around her by the assembled well-known comedians. There is a dancing barber, a secret ramen genius, a tofu-making small arms expert, and her friend Peacock, the quirky, charismatic Yû Aoi, who wants to live in Paris with a Frenchman and a view of the Eiffel Tower. Aoi is a great talent and it is slightly disappointing that she is under-used here. Perhaps that is deliberate, to prevent her overshadowing Ueno.

The comedy is quick-fire and this is a series of loosely connected sketches rather than a compelling narrative. Production values are low and reek of micro-budget movie-making, but the comedy is funny so all is forgiven. The star here really is Miki's script and sense of comic timing (though more visuality and less narration would have been welcome). And a relief to see a J director with a sense of economy - the 90-minute running time is just right. Pleasant fare for those who share the director's light, frothy sense of humour.

I am kind of surprised to see such low rating and bad reviews.

To be quite fair, I found the movie a fantastic entertainment. I hardly ever laugh so much during the film as I did yesterday.

First of all, I would not say that plot is nonexistent here. It is pretty chaotic, but that was the point here, and this is where the charm of Turtles lays.

I see it in a way as a parody of the detective movies with a simple plot (a crime happened, police is chasing them, the criminal is caught). Here we have no crime, the whole spying looks a bit surreal until the very end, the detectives talk nonsense most of the time, the clumsiness of the investigation is hilarious.

Many scenes look just random, but again this is why they are funny. Dancing hairdresser or the lottery with 'fabulous' prices might not add much to the development of the spy plot, but they help to create a great impression of a crazy life the main character is leading. It is the accumulation of the surprising elements and the unexpected that put the smile on my face.

You can also find bits parodying teen movies (Suzume crush on Katou, and their rendez-vous years later), and once again, I could not stop laughing how awkward, but how close to real life that was.

All in all, I think it is really worth giving it a chance, just sit back and relax, and if you don't expect a highly intellectual film, you might love it as I did.

While there's no doubt that its willfully unassuming title will throw off at least a few high-minded film-goers, 'Turtles Swim Faster Than Expected' is an accessible and undemanding comedy that showcases director Satoshi Miki's inimitable brand of unconventional humour. Juri Ueno, already in her second cinematic lead role at the tender age of 19, plays a bored, neglected housewife who chances upon a rather small (to put it mildly) recruiting poster for spies. Her decision to join a furtive band of gloriously inactive secret agents allows her to gradually regain the sense of initiative and self-worth she once possessed in her student days but had lost along the way.

Of course, it's not nearly as formulaic or wooden as all that, and the movie above all is a vehicle for Miki to flex his comic muscles. There are some lovely moments, mostly involving the delightful pairing of Ryo Iwamatsu and Eri Fuse as the husband-and-wife team of spies who become Ueno's mentors (the restaurant scene is particularly enjoyable); and Ueno plays the painfully normal Suzume with a consummate and quiet ease which has informed all her other characters to date. She is clearly a natural actress, and coming off the heels of 'Swing Girls', here is another main part that Ueno breathes life into with such understated confidence.

Everything, however, is run through with Miki's discerning eye for the quirky which is more amusing than funny, and the movie doesn't quite reach the level of inventive tomfoolery that it clearly aspires to. 'Turtles' is determinedly low-key, lo-fi and low-maintenance, meaning that for every joke the price is exacted in meandering narrative and lack of focus. Miki also criminally wastes the charming Yu Aoi as Ueno's uninhibited friend, a character who drifts in and out of the story and fails to provide the comic momentum that is hinted at.

'Turtles' is a fairly enjoyable film in its own right, but the main interest for it lies in the fact that much of the cast and indeed style would go on to help create Miki's next project, the brilliant TV series 'Jiko Keisatsu (Limitation Police)'. For those who enjoyed 'Turtles', this comic drama is essential viewing; and if the movie left you underwhelmed, know that 'Jiko Keisatsu' is a thrilling realization of the potential Miki showed here and you could do a lot worse than checking it out.