With an urge to go to the bathroom and a free period to do so, college student Keiko Obayashi drops in at her home to find her boyfriend cheating on her with another student. After her emotional and violent reaction with a lacrosse stick, she leaves and finds herself weepy on a train going nowhere until she falls asleep and wakes up two hours from her home. She winds up in a rural town called Masao, home to a bunch of small businesses about to be threatened by a neat new mass-market drugstore opening up—where Keiko gets a job. Meanwhile, five shop owners in their 50’s, angered by the drugstore undercutting their prices and stealing their business, plan to invade the store, smoke everyone out and barricade themselves in, destroying the store’s business for as long as necessary. However, each one falls in love with Keiko and all soon take up her hobby of playing lacrosse, in hopes of spending more time with her.
It’s odd to find that Kankuro Kudo, the writer responsible for both Ping Pong and Go, manages a film with such a baffling structure and uninteresting story. The plot switches focus from Keiko finding a new life in a new town, to these older, vehemently anti-corporation men plotting their revenge, to finally, their sudden fascination with Keiko that leads them to form an underdog lacrosse team in the hopes of getting a date with her. Director Katsuhide Motoki enters into this lacrosse section as if it were a subplot, but then he stays with it for awkwardly long enough, until the viewer has to realize that the film has two main focuses, both equally poor. Keiko somehow hopes to get revenge on her boyfriend by coaching a middle-aged men’s amateur lacrosse team well [brilliant plan] and the men are going through this much trouble, competing with each other and other teams for weeks, all to get a date with her. Is the big corporate drugstore really the reason their businesses are suffering in the beginning of the film?
If the illogical plotting can be ignored, the film does have some great material in the middle act, often humorous when the middle-aged men struggle to compete with other lacrosse teams—including one made up of housewives. Rena Tanaka is likeable and cute, but offers little more. The five men never really fall in love with the game of lacrosse and primarily play for the team because of the reward of a date.
The film remains similarly self-absorbed in the idea that it is funny to watch these hopeful, oddball men lose repeatedly at lacrosse without any meaning in sight. No lessons are learned, no satisfaction is gained and very few laughs at had by the end. The appeal of this film is confounding. The fact that it got made is by far the most interesting thing about it. But then again, when the most important idea a film can offer is visual evidence that lacrosse sticks also make good household tools, that isn’t too difficult to top.
Reviewed by Tarun
