Absolutely Fantastic

A different way of telling a story

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

It's Christmas time in Tokyo and as three homeless companions wander the streets, digging through trash for dinner, they come across an abandoned baby. The spirit of Christmas drives them to pick her up and the rest of the movie details their journey to find the parents of the little tyke.This might very well be the most down to earth movie director Satoshi Kon has ever made, which is saying a lot about his usual fare. It contains no supernatural elements, no crazy trips into the cracking psyche of man, nothing really out of the ordinary. Yet it is strange enough so as to be recognizable. The plot relies heavily on happy coincidences, but often enough those coincidences are so out there that they have to be intentional, making the seeming laziness of the script into a stylish feature. I certainly had no complaints, the whole story was a blast to follow, especially because you really couldn't predict where it was going.But, beneath all the craziness and oddness, Tokyo Godfathers is a character film and it pulls it off fantastically. All three of the eponymous "godfathers" are deeply layered, tragic, funny and, beyond all else, interesting personalities. Each one is as different from one another as day is from night, yet you can see what pulls them together. They're as interesting separately as they are in a group, but it's the group that drives the individuals to do pretty much anything. I was actually sad to see the film end, because it meant saying goodbye.Tokyo Godfathers is an excellent film on many levels. It is a superb animated film, fantastic characters study and actually a pretty neat Christmas film as well. Definitely worth checking out.

In continuing my trip into the late Satoshi Kon's all-too-small body of work (four feature films as director and one television series that is MUCH too hard to track down), I now come across this film, 2003's Tokyo Godfathers, which I unfortunately missed when it was first released and was actually the first time I had heard of the director.I was happy to finally come across a copy and pop it in... only to find that it was not at all what I was expecting from the director of such mind-benders as Perfect Blue and Paprika. This is both good and not-so-good. It's certainly not a bad film, nor one that is distasteful. It's a sentimental piece of pap that has the ambition to the Japanese anime answer to It's a Wonderful Life: a Christmas story that is not necessarily all about Christmas that has supernatural (or "miracle") overtones, and goes sometimes into dark places.The short of it: three homeless people, one a bearded guy with a family that he left behind, a transvestite who insists on being called a woman's name and is so flamboyant as to make Harvey Fierstein jealous, and a young runaway girl whose father is a cop. They come across a baby abandoned in a dump where they dwell at night, and decide to take it to the police... well, not unanimously anyway, the transvestite wants to hold on to it and mother it. But they come across some hijinks and problems along the way, including the woman who comes back to find the baby again.I could go on about the plot, but it should only be the short of it not so that I'll reveal anything so surprising, but there is TOO much to try and reveal in a plot synopsis. Like many anime films and series I can think of (on the action-side Dragonball Z and on the more adult side Princess Mononoke), the story can get complicated, if not impossible to follow. In this case though it's a holiday family film (yes, family film, despite its dark corridors its meant for ma and pa and the kids sitting around the fire), and in the last fifteen minutes or so complications, coincidences and/or contrivances get piled on, leading up to a big chase scene up a building.This would all be fine if the film itself didn't become so sentimental. It's hard to take that in Hollywood movies, but with Kon, and he has the best intentions believe me, it becomes a tale so squishy that you can feel it slipping from your fingers. It is pap, but not the kind of enjoyable pap that the original John Ford entertainer 3 Godfathers was back in 1948 (same premise, three men and a baby, but with the Duke in one of his best performances, but I digress it's good). Here the characters end up being more of service to Kon's 'Wonderful Life' tale, yet this does come after some time developing them. We get back-story, and later some contradiction to the back-story, and some visual aids such as a flashback to the transvestite's story as a singer who got in to a big fight with a heckler.Sure, the film has beautiful animation. Kon is one of the forerunners of Miyazaki as one of the greats in his time of modern anime in Japan, changing the game and surprising at many turns. At the least Tokyo Godfathers is pretty to look at, a kind of urban fairy tale with lots of snow and harder-edged buildings and grit, with some blasts of big humor and some deserved heart. If only the story didn't sink into its sappy moments so much - though for some this will be just the thing that will take them in, and I can't blame them. Perhaps it's the Grinch in me.

A loose remake of John Ford's "3 Godfathers", Satoshi Kon's "Tokyo Godfathers" sees a group of homeless characters stumbling upon an abandoned baby on Christmas Eve. The trio embark on a quest to reunite the baby with its parents, get into several dangerous predicaments and reveal secrets about their pasts as their journey progresses.Though it avoids some sentimentality, "Tokyo Godfathers" is the most contrived of Satoshi Kon's four animated features. One is always aware of where the director's plot is going, few moments surprise, moments of pathos feel far too calculated, Satoshi offers no real insights into homelessness and his visuals are mostly generic. Elsewhere the usual Christmas values are espoused - family, love, kindness, friendship, don't stab your father – though Satoshi undermines them all with a bit more grit and grime than is typical of the genre (one of our heroes, for example, is a transsexual). On the plus side, the film offers some nice Christmas ambiance, seems to be channelling Neil Jordan and Satoshi is always strong with climaxes.5/10 – Worth one viewing.

Usually (maybe if it was another film) I'd say that all those coincidences how the people meet and how all turns good during the whole film (It just happens a hundered times!) are SO KITCHY but no way! **ck it! It's GREAT! It's a pleasure to watch! It's **cking hilarious! I didn't think for one second that I was going to rate this one lower then 10/10 pancakes here.It's a masterpiece! Kitchy? No way, it's an x-mess film AND it makes us feel happy!Somehow totally reminded my of Night on Earth by Jim Jarmusch...What beautiful anime!If you're out for some VERY positive, funny, crazy film that has still an excellent feeling for serious drama (elements and bits) and a titanium solid story then your choice must be Tokyo Grandfathers!Description in one word: ENJOY!