Happî furaito

It would be a mess if all the crew on a jet liner are this inept. They all act like they're fresh out of school. In reality, there's a mixture of experienced, and not so experienced crews on board.

The movie was fun to watch. But it seems like the producers including the director really had to learn the subject that they were not so well prepared to take on. Every scene looked like regurgitating something they've learned from ANA. The airline will be out of business if they had this many problems within 2 hours of the flight.

Saburo Tokito, and Shinobu Terajima was good as the captain and the head cabin attendant. It seem like the movie followed the format of another series "Attention please" staring Aya Ueto. The formula of inept flight attendant(s), and the strict instructor is strait out of that story.

Ittoku Kishibe also was great in his supporting role. If they collected the actors of Tokito, Terajima, and Kishibe's caliber in other roles, this movie would have been better.

Not a bad film, but could have been better. It had a charm of its own, and was worth watching.

Shinobu Yaguchi made his directorial mark with giddy comedies like My Secret Cache, Waterboys, and Swing Girls, and this film takes his comedy (of sorts) to the friendly skies.

Happy Flight is a buoyant entertainment, with situations springing from the familiar context of the airport and environs. The cast is uniformly agreeable, showing their skills at light, breezy material. If anything, the comedy is perhaps too light; unlike Yaguchi's other blithe offerings, there's a certain paucity of fresh gags to keep the whole thing running smooth. The talented Haruka Ayase proved her comic skill with Hotaro no Hikaru; the movie Cyborg Girl gave her a platform for a clever, funny dual role. Here, however, the writing doesn't allow Ayase to make much of her character or situation. Other actors have the same problem.

The situations were engaging for the most part, but never seemed to result in comic payoff. Given the level of talent here, one expect a bit more. If anything, this comes off like a gently comic drama, always careful to treat ANA with kid gloves - but in the process depriving the comic elements of bite.

I caught this film in a retrospective of Japanese films at a local mall this week. With a title like "Happy Flight", I expected a light comedy although I had no idea what sort of "flight" was referred to. An pre-flight instruction video that preceded the opening credits made it clear that this would be about a flight of an airplane.

In the first thirty minutes or so of the film, we see a slew of activity that went on behind the scenes before a commercial flight takes off from the airport. We meet the pilot-in-training on his final flight exam, the stern pilot examiner, the strict purser, the gaggle of excited new stewardesses on their first foreign flight, the team of mechanics on the tarmac, the ground crew, the people in the flight tower, the guy responsible to ward off birds, and of course, all those the quirky passengers. When the plane takes flight and encounters various problems with natural, mechanical, and human causes, the crew both onboard and on the ground all cooperate to ensure the passengers welfare.

These people all have their own little side stories to tell, mostly hilarious. But you can also feel an underlying seriousness the overall story the director wants to tell. This becomes more evident when the plane is in flight when every decision made is one of life and death. In the midst of the comedy, you cannot help but feel the tension and drama of the situations as well. This is indeed everything you are curious about the airline industry but were too afraid to ask or too afraid to even actually know. As I take my next flight, I will definitely think of this movie again.

A fun and exciting movie about one particular ANA flight from Haneda Airport to Honolulu. Overall, it was a very fun and exciting movie, but I felt 103 minutes weren't nearly enough to summarize this story.

There were simply too many things happening with too many characters. We have the pilots, flight attendants, mechanics, flight control, weather control, and airport staff. Each with their own situations and problems to handle. I guess it shows that hard work of everyone, not only the pilots, are required for a smooth flight. However, the film ended before I really connected with any of the characters. The lead actor and actress' screen time and presence weren't much more than other supporting cast.

Ayase Haruka's acting was disastrous in this movie, she's simply not a light comedy material. Although the cast was loaded with big-name actors, it felt cheap and rushed, like a TV dorama series.

The production team did well to summarize the story the best they could in 103 minutes, and I thought the story was nice and characters were interesting. A fun watch-and-forget movie that would've worked much better as a dorama series.

This 2008 Japanese movie titled "Happy Flight" (aka "Happy Flight: Happî furaito") is branded as a comedy, but it is hardly a comedy in the traditional sense. I would dare to say that this was more of a drama lightly glaced with a hint of comedy. But a comedy, it is not.

I sat down to watch "Happy Flight" believing it to be a comedy, so I was in for a rude awakening, as the movie wasn't a comedy. With that being said, I will say that the movie was actually entertaining and enjoyable.

The acting in the movie was good, although there weren't really any particular performance that stood out. So thumbs up on the acting performances.

The storyline in "Happy Flight" actually follows multiple angles and characters, all tied in on the flight to Honolulu. There is the pilot in training, the stewardesses, the gate crew, the mechanic, etc. And I will say that each individual aspect of characters and plots were given sufficient screen time and were presented wholeheartedly to make the movie have a good flow to it.

Just beware when you sit down to watch "Happy Flight", because this is not really a comedy.

My rating of "Happy Flight" is a six out of ten stars. I was genuinely entertained with this movie from writer and director Shinobu Yaguchi.