Someone recommended this movie to me last year and I finally got around to watching it. It's a Summer Film is a movie about a Hadashi (barefoot) a member of the high school movie club who is a big fan of jidai geki movies. Unfortunately for Hadashi, the movie club is making a love movie so she is not happy and wants to make her own samurai film.
Hadashi is trying to find the perfect main actor for her samurai movie when she runs into the mysterious Rintaro. Together with her Kendo friend Blue Hawaii and Astronomy friend Kickboard, Hadashi works to get her jidai geki movie and show the movie club people what a real movie is.
It's a Summer Film is a low budget seishun summer movie in the vein of Summer Time Machine Blues and the plot is basically the same science fiction story including elements of Toki wo Kakeruna, Koibitotachi, two shows by Katsuyuki Motohiro. I would not have been shocked if he had directed It's a Summer Film between both projects but the director is a different person Matsumoto Soshi.
I really like Hadashi's passion for jidaigeki movies and it reminded me how little I have seen of the classics. I have only seen 7 Samurai, Rashomon, a few Lone Wolf and Cub movies but not the original Zatoichis etc. One day, I will need to go through a jidaigeki classic marathon.
I really like the casting of the director from the movie club, Karin. She's got that slightly annoying ojyousan who is in love with falling in love shtick going on so you understand why Hadashi does not like her and makes a great foil for Hadashi.
I love the parts about making a movie because it's good to have a peek behind the curtain and watching the characters spend their summer trying to film a movie for the school festival makes me want to cheer them on. It is a movie that asks are jidaigeki and romantic movies that much different?
What I did not like about It's a Summer Film is that the science fiction parts aka time travel bits do not make sense at all. The script is clumsy like a high school kid and it is aiming to produce this feeling for the audience especially for the last shot but the movie had lost me by then. I feel the the writer should have only done the time travel revelation towards the end of the movie.
Out of the 3 of Summer Time Machine, Toki wo Kakeruna Koibitotachi and It's a Summer Film, I rate Toki wo Kakeruna the best and It's a Summer Film the worst. Really wanted to like it because it's such an innocent movie trying to be fun and good try but meh for me.
5 comments:
I saw this film a year or two ago and it wasn't very good.
Re: classics... watch Harikiri if you haven't seen it.
For all its unevenness, some of the performances are a pleasure.
Ito Marika shows the same easy quality she brings to “Omimi ni Aimashitara”. The small amount of Idol work I have seen don’t make an impression, but in acting has the ability to really work as lead with an ensemble cast.
Yes, the time-travel component never feels whole, but at a meta level does give the actual film a parallel quality to the very one the students are making - full of earnestness yet unable to control the ideas.
Gonna add a quick recommendation here: I'm currently really enjoying Percent which stars Ito Marika (Hadashi in this movie).
@Robert: Did you mean Harakiri from 1962?
Yes. I was annoyed by my mispelling right after I posted that.
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