danield10101

This is a film to see for the music.

The film is scored by the amazing jazz pianist and composer Hiromi Uehara, and every musical sequence is wonderful. The animation is also striking, from hyper-realistic depictions of Tokyo to imaginative representations of the musicians' inner worlds as they explore the space of chords and sequences of jazz improvisation.

On the other hand, the story is trite and predictable, and the characters are absurdly histrionic (as is typical in conventional animé). It also seems more a bit inappropriate that there's only one significant female character in a film so dependent on the musical ability of a woman performer and composer.

OK, I'm not a typical viewer -- but as a scientist and engineer, I wanted to see the story of a boy figuring out how to make a working electrical system from scrap. But every time we see William start to think about anything involving engineering, we immediately jump to some other place in the story. One has the impression that whoever wrote the script hated science class and doesn't ever want to think about how anything works. It's fine to tell the story of the drought and its impact on the town, but the two stories should run in parallel, with us learning with William as he figures out how to make a working wind-driven pump. In (film making) technical terms, the first act lasts almost the whole movie -- we spend the whole time setting up the problem and the solution then appears by magic. Disappointing.

A wonderful performance by Rita Moreno anchors this film, which does a much better job of portraying realistic people while still preserving some of the stage production feel. This version also conveys the impermanence of the world the characters live in and thus explains (without excusing) their behavior.

OK, there is a scene where the school band is playing, and the pianist is pounding the keys but the music has no piano part audible! But only a (bad) pianist would notice this. Excellent film, see it in a theater when you can.