Disturbing yet enthralling

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Kanna Kurita (Miyazaki) is a young talent scout for a record label in Japan. She stumbles upon a video of a punk band called The Shonen Merikensakku (The Brass Knuckle Boys). By "punk" I mean Sex Pistols not Sum 41. They are singing a song that sounds like "Surfin' to pass the time." She shows it to her boss, fully expecting to be fired. Her less than successful contract will soon be ending anyway so she plans on helping run her father's sushi shop. To her dismay, before starting the record label, her boss was actually in a punk rock band. She is ordered to manage a comeback tour. She reluctantly accepts but soon realizes that the video clip is twenty five years old. The rockers are old and tired (compared to the youths in the video, that is). The Shonen Merikensakku is the adventure of Kanna and the band coming together to discover (or rediscover) themselves and punk rock.Throughout the movie Kanna documents their travels with a Sony HD camera (there is a ton of product placement throughout the movie). Elements of her videos, like interviews, give the film a This is Spinal Tap-vibe but this isn't a documentary or a mockumentary (a documentary parody).The best part, and frankly, one of the few positive things about this movie is the catchy music. "Surfin' to pass the time" is a really cool song and it is played throughout the movie. We learn that the guitarist, Haruo (Kimura), and vocalist, Jimmy (Taguchi), first started in the music industry as teen idols (a category of boy bands). Accompanying this information, we watch a segment of one of their music videos. In the words of Shonen Merikensakku's original manager: "There wasn't a word for 'dorky' at the time but it was dorky." It is short and silly and illustrates why these guys wanted to break away and do punk. My major qualm with the musical genre is that the songs are often too long. In Shonen Merikensakku, I actually wished they were longer. If only the rest of the movie was as good as the music.As I write this, I am trying to decide on what to comment on first: the silliness, the toilet humor or the miserable ending. The movie is full of toilet humor and fart jokes which are irrelevant and distracting. At one point, for example, Kanna establishes a rule that if someone farts that person is fined 500 yen. That's comedy gold, folks... The acting overall is way too silly for my tastes. By throwing the sophomoric humor all over, it's like the movie is compensating for something. Compensating for what I don't know, but whatever it is, it isn't worth it.The art style is fine but it feels a little forced. It's like a lot of elements are put together to fit the definition of punk: "Alright, we need spiked hair." "Check." "Studded coat." "Check." "Noisy music." "Check."The most offensive thing about Shonen Merikensakku is the ending, mind yourself of spoilers for this part. I usually try not talk about endings but this one made me so mad, I just have to. It reminded me of that Gordon Levitt movie Premium Rush (the one where he is a bicycle courier in New York). The final lines were something like, "Someday I'll have a suit and tie job but not today! Today, I'm riding my bike." The idealistic, romantic attitude of the movie is dashed with this single line. Why couldn't he say, "I will always ride my bike because that's what I love to do." Disney's Brave pulled similar shenanigans. The strong-willed, independent princess concluded with the sentiment, "Someday I'll get married...but not until I'm ready!" Why does she have to say that? She could've easily said, "I'm not getting married today and I might not ever want but that's OK because I am being me." It's like the movies are saying, being young and hopeful and energetic is all fine and dandy until you grow up. When you grow up, you have to put away your little toys and dreams to toil away until you die.The whole reason Kanna accepts the job to manage the band is because she is making a living doing what she really likes. She doesn't want to run her father's sushi shop; she wants to tour with a band. In the final moments of the movie, we see Kanna working in her father's sushi shop. She runs out the door saying that she has a gig. We cut to the band starting their set with Kanna eagerly watching in the audience. By working part-time in the sushi shop and part-time as the band's manager, her passion is being relegated to the position of hobby. It gets better. The band is playing and they begin fighting each other (fighting each other is their shtick). The bass player swings his guitar at the guitarist but accidentally hits Jimmy, knocking him out. On Jimmy's butt is a patch that says "END." Some pop music fades in and the movie ends. Twenty Five years ago, during their final performance, a similar blow to the head paralyzed Jimmy and, in effect, disbanding the group. With this, the movie is saying Kanna couldn't even manage the punk group as a passion! It is time for her to grow up and work in her father's sushi shop. After this entire two hour movie, that's what you're giving me, The Shonen Merikensakku? I'm not buying it.Overall, I wouldn't recommend The Shonen Merikensakku. The music is solid but it couldn't possibly salvage the movie as a whole and just thinking about the ending and the stupid humor makes me mad. Pass on this and check out Burst City or This is Spinal Tap.

SPOILERS AHEAD!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.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 and beautiful actress…I've seen a number of vehicles she's been involved with, but she really, 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, I think, would stand to 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…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 brilliant performance turned in by the lead actress.

In "The Shonen Merikensack," young record company talent scout Kanna Kurita (Aoi Miyazaki) finds a video clip of an abrasive punk rock band on the Internet. Although she knows nothing about punk music or even likes punk music, she feels the band could be the next big thing and bursts into Tokita's (Yusuke Santamaria) office to tell him so. Tokita watches the video clip and orders Kanna to find the band and sign them to a contract. This starts Kanna's quest to find the band known as "The Shonen Merikensack" (which translates into English as "The Brass Knuckle Boys"). What Kanna doesn't know, but will find out soon enough, is that the video clip was filmed 25 years ago and the band members are now all washed up middle aged men."The Shonen Merikensack" starts off firing on all cylinders, with Aoi Miyazaki dominating the screen with her precocious screen presence. Once Kanna finds the members of "The Shonen Merikensack" the movie shifts into its second act of its three part tale. Koichi Sato does a fine job as bassist Akio – a Sid Vicious like middle aged man, Yuichi Kimura plays the stoic guitarist Haruo – brother of Akio and often bickering opponent, Tomorowo Taguchi is nearly unidentifiable as the Johnny Rotten like vocalist, and finally Hiroki Miyake plays the recovering from hemorrhoids surgery drummer for "The Shonen Merikensack." During the movie's second act, the film turns into a road movie of sorts as Kanna drives the band around in her father's mini van. The final act consists of all the major problems between Kanna and her boyfriend, as well as the quibbles between brothers Akio and Haruo being resolved.By now this review may seem like an ode to Aoi Miyazaki, but she's deserving of it and its hard to quantify how charming she is in "The Shonen Merikensack." She'll often perform with exaggerated expressions, which for some performers may come off as annoying, but with Aoi Miyazaki you'll likely find yourself laughing for no real reason. The movie itself has only one non deal breaker drawback – which is the gradual shift away from Aoi Miyazaki to the band members of "The Shonen Merikensack." The band members can't maintain the same amount of interest that Aoi Miyzaki is able to elicit. Also, the goofy comedy vibe found in the early portions of the film becomes more muted because of this shift. In a perfect scenario the movie would have stayed with Aoi Miyazaki as the central point of the film and continue its non-stop slapstick moments to the end.With that said, "The Shonen Merikensack" offers plenty of laugh out loud moments and you do get Aoi Miyazaki in her goofiest performance to date. Compared to other recent music inspired Japanese films, "The Shonen Merikensack" is on the same level with "Detroit Metal City" and easily trumps "GS Wonderland." A double bill of "Detroit Metal City" and "The Shonen Merikensack" would surely make a whole lot of people happy. Aoi Miyazaki is punk!

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.