I Wish
Ohshiro Maeda, left, and Koki Maeda in I Wish
Time Out rating:
Time Out says
Mon May 7 2012
Japanese brothers Koichi and Ryunosuke (real-life siblings Koki and Ohshirô Maeda) are worlds apart. Not literal worlds: Both boys, who mostly communicate via cell phone, live on the same island—Kyushu—but in separate cities with different parents, the result of divorce. Hirokazu Koreeda’s pleasingly paper-thin dramedy spends much of its first half sketching the disparate lives of the young duo, and of several others around them, in ways that alternate between poetic (Koichi’s teacher pats him on the shoulder with equal parts concern and condescension) and tedious (a cloyingly padded-out plotline about an introverted young girl who wants to be an actor). It’s an uneasy mix of keen verisimilitude and phony uplift—sort of the best of Ozu melded with the worst of Spielberg.
Fortunately, the film improves immeasurably after Koichi and Ryunosuke hatch a family-reuniting plan that involves making a wish at the exact point when two bullet trains pass each other. With a clear goal in sight, the movie suddenly takes on an engrossing urgency. Shots of the kids and their friends running around unfamiliar environments have the fantastical qualities of Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are, minus the forced whimsy. And the quest builds to a beautifully knotty resolution that makes you wish Koreeda had found a way to completely excise the earlier mawkishness.
Follow Keith Uhlich on Twitter: @keithuhlich
Author: Keith Uhlich
Release details
US release:
Fri Feb 17 2012
Duration:
128 mins
Cast and crew
Cast:
Nene Ohtsuka, Ohshiro Maeda, Koki Maeda, Yoshio Harada, Joe Odagiri
Director:
Hirokazu Kore-eda
Screenwriter:
Hirokazu Kore-eda
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