Shonen merikensakku

I'll watch anything with Aoi Miyazaki in it but it was extremely tough this time. She's fabulous, of course, and the film starts off with a refreshingly bizarre sense of humor, but it quickly devolves into toilet humor. Miyazaki plays a record company office worker who discovers a punk rock band on the Internet, thinks they are the next big thing, and decides to represent them on behalf of her company. What she doesn't know, at first, is that the band's web site and videos are 25 years old, so she must follow through promoting a group of middle-aged punk rockers because contracts have been signed and jobs are on the line. I can't imagine who this movie is aimed at. Young people (who are into punk) will recognize it as fake and older people (who may have been punks) will too. Brass Knuckle Boys confuses punk with childishness and fails to create characters that anyone will care about. For every quick and funny moment that works, and there's a bunch of them, there's umpteen that don't. And the sibling rivalry, family drama subplot is painfully uninteresting. I'm a huge Aoi Miyazaki fan but a two hour fart joke is a bad vehicle for her.

Shonen Merikensakku (Brass Knuckle Boys) is a 2088 Japanese comedy film.I see two other users have reviewed this movie as of this writing. I tend to agree with both of them for the most part (both their complaints and their praise), and tend to fall right in the middle of their two reviews.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

You can read the synopsis/summary and the other reviews to find out what this film is about. Basically, it's a "road trip comedy drama about getting the band back together". It's not without its faults, but I found it perfectly enjoyable enough to recommend.

The Good: This film is often hysterically funny and highly entertaining. Aoi Miyazaki is a ridiculously talented actress; I've seen a number of vehicles she's been involved with, but she really shines here (no small feat considering she has to essentially play den mother to 4 veteran actors twice her age). As the movie progresses, the chemistry that grows between her and the band of middle aged misfits is charming and frequently engaging. In turn, the band starts to view her as a younger sister/daughter that they want to look after (despite their outward crudeness and incompetence). It's all fairly cute and an effective part of what drives this film.

The Bad: Too long, WAY too much back story via flashbacks, and often too much low brow humor that is totally unnecessary. When will film makers realize that sometimes "less is more"?...There's a good 30 minutes here of parts of various scenes that should have been left on the cutting room floor. It's a shame really, because with a snappier pace and a proper pass through the edit department, this film would have been absolutely AWESOME, and could have been be one of the funniest "heart & soul" comedies of the decade.

As it is, this is a movie that is somewhat flawed, but is certainly a worthwhile watch nonetheless. Its current rating of 6.6 is just about right in my opinion. Not great, but certainly good enough, and most certainly better than watching the next Adam Sandler movie, or some other awfully atrocious comedy coming out of Hollywood these days.

I'll give it 7 out of 10 stars, because it mostly accomplishes what it sets out to, is often hilariously entertaining, and it's worth watching just to see the utterly charming comedic performance turned in by the lead actress.