Nintama Rantarô

It has to be said that although the idea of adapting a kids cartoon comedy set in Ninja Academy to a live-action feature appears to be a sound enough proposal, it's hard to imagine that the wayward talent of the bad-boy of Japanese underground cinema would be the first choice in mind when it comes to the handling of directing duties. But then again, perhaps not, since the only consistent and predictable feature of Takashi Miike's prodigious output is indeed its inconsistency and unpredictability.

It also has to be said that at first sight, the young students enrolled in the first year of Ninja Academy here don't look the kind of stuff that silent, deadly assassins are made of. Shinbei, for example, is a little overweight, has a tendency to fall asleep at inopportune moments, but he does have a surprisingly hard head, even if about 90% of it appears to be made of snot. Another student, Kirimaru, has to share baby-sitting duties with class time, and you probably can't execute too many elaborate manoeuvres with a baby on your back. As for Rantaro, the diminutive hero of the comedy, he has a lot of pressure placed on him by his poor farming family. Formerly ninja's themselves, Rantaro's parents have placed all their hopes on their son becoming the greatest ninja ever. That doesn't really look likely at the start.

Ninja Kids!!! does however look promisingly funny as a film, Miike entering fully into the spirit of the comic adventures with cartoony exaggeration, cheap-looking prosthetics, snooker-ball bumps on heads, explosive CGI action effects, pools of snot and inconvenient piles of dog poo lying around for the unwary ninja assassin to slip around in. If nothing else, the film is assured some measure of success for the idea alone, as the only thing cuter than Asian kids in movies is Asian kids doing comedy. Other than perhaps cute Asian kids doing ninja comedy. Set them lose on some mishaps involving shuriken and caltrop needles and it really doesn't get much better than that.

Which is why it's disappointing that Ninja Kids!!!, and the anarchic possibilities afforded by the combination of kiddie ninja adventures and Takashi Miike, never really lives up to its full potential. There's really not enough room in a feature-length film to include all the funny little incidents and wacky characters without it coming at the cost of sacrificing any unifying plot development and character progression. The attempt to build up a world of competing rival ninja groups based around an incident involving singing hairdressing ninjas is certainly off-the-scale in terms of colourful bizarreness, but the rivalry between one of the ninja groups and the first-year academy students is resolved by a ninja "Wacky Races" competition involving traps, pits and rolling boulders that never generates much excitement and feels a little bit anti-climatic.

Consequently, there's little solid character development - weird characters and egg-headed villains are only briefly introduced, and few of Rantaro's classmates make any kind of impression - with the result that the film feels a little bit episodic and the humour tends to be somewhat hit-and-miss. There are however enough laughs and cuteness guaranteed in the premise for Ninja Kids!!! to be more than a little divertingly entertaining.

Within a minute of watching this film, I realised that every director can have an off-day. Takashi Miike, the acclaimed director of the 13 Assassins, Yatterman and Audition, fails miserly in his attempt at pure comedy. May be it is the light hearted nature or family orientated style that Miike is heading towards, but Ninja Kids qualify nothing more than a waste of time. In fact the film began brightly and the laughs, the sets and manga style comedic sequences are fun enough to watch and cute enough kids' antics to make the 1st quarter works out in a promising manner. Then the moment when the kids are all send home for an early Summer holiday, the film and everything goes downhill from there. At times the film not only feels prolonged, dragged, but ultimately stale and bored. The funny moments and sets soon became far and between and the result is alienating the audience involvement, which is in essence a crucial part of any comedy. If audience is not laughing with you, at you or at whatever, then the film is simply not working. All in all, Ninja Kids is a massive disappointing effort from such a capable director. Sure some fun can be had and the class of kids are fun to watch, but it is only a manner of time before the same antics you once fall for, becomes quickly frankly annoying and eventually regrettably bored. Perhaps this film is really made for kids and as for the title, there is no misleading advertising. So maybe it is just me that is expecting Ninja Turtles, but I am just not sold on it…

P.S. This is in fact based on the popular comic book – Ninja Kids

Neo rates it 5/10

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I went to see this film with my daughter, with little expectations, but a bit of hope, as Miike is always original. I actually watched this movie in Miike's home town, just a bit away from where he was born, and only add this to inform some of the English fans out there how interesting it is, that not only do most Japanese not know who Miike is, even the people in his home town don't know him.

But, to stay on topic, I enjoyed many of the childish fun of this film, along with the great use of ridiculous over the top special effects and make up.

However, I can't really say I enjoyed this film, as I found it very unfocused. This had a charm for a time, but I felt it wore thin eventually, and the fighting for the middle 40 minutes or so of the movie lacked any reason or possibility of resolution. During this middle part, so many characters were introduced, who, although stylistic in appearance, were unnecessary, especially in a children's movie.

Most of the bad guys could have been pushed into one characters, and most of the good guys too. (If you have a chance to see this movie, try and explain why Miike chooses to introduce all the students from 1st to 6th grade, despite the fact that we know, from all that has come before that part, as well as from the Japanese title, that this movie is about Nantaro and the 1st graders) I also really felt that a lot of the FX style was influenced by Stephen Chow's films, and in comparison, not as good.

So, I don't mean to come down too hard on this film, which is appropriate and good enough for 4 - 10 year old to enjoy, with some very anime influenced make-up and costume designs. With the near 2 hour running time for this one, I would bet a 90 minute cut might be good enough to really recommend.

I do hope more people in Japan, and Yao city learn about Miike, but this will not be the movie I show first.