Waterboys

Nice idea: the hopeless swimmers of Tadano High put themselves through hell to become Japan's first male synchronised swimming team in order to fulfil the dream of their coach, even though she's away having a baby. Sadly, the film itself is not so great. Yaguchi's previous, smaller movies didn't strain for humour, but this big ensemble comedy tries much too hard. Yaguchi constantly goes for live-action cartoon-style visual gags and botches the tone or timing of most of them. Worse, he was obviously unable to control Takenaka, who plays an aquarium owner with such 'brio' that the film becomes unwatchable whenever he's on. And the handling of a gay subplot, although very PC, is so perfunctory that it simply isn't funny. Still, the boys are cute and the show they finally manage to put on is quite something.