Weekend Movie-Viewing

Dandy Daddy

A father who writes romance novels gets nervous when he thinks his teen-daughter has begun dating. He's very sweet but let's face it...he knows what guys can do. He also is a bit of a hypocrite. Basically, he wants to be seen by his fans -- who are legion-- as understanding. He's Mr Free Love etc. So in public, on TV, in his daughter's school, he's seen as the great freethinker. But secretly he's having a nervous breakdown. The usual stuff happens -- misunderstandings, etc. But it's really a sweet story.

Speed Scandals
A radio DJ has been speaking on air to a girl who wants to meet her father. He encourages her to meet his father. He tells her to go, and promises to help her in her singing career. And asks her to call back his audience to tell them how the meeting with her father is going. Totally not realizing that he's her father. So she comes to his house and he discovers he has a daughter who is a single mother. Of course he's uncomfortable and does the DNA thing. Then much to his chagrin he realizes he has a daughter. Things get complicated when she goes to his studio to sing. So there's a lot of hiding of stuff and misunderstandings. But when her little boy goes missing, his true grandfatherliness comes out. Sweet little father-daughter story.

Delicious Gakuin
A DRAMA
Three guys get kidnapped and forced into a cooking school. Ah, the Japanese obsession with food! If you like Iron Chef, you'll like it. And if you like making fun of celebrity culture, this little drama might be fun. I laughed out loud several times. Not super-great but not super-bad.

There is a guy who loves beauty and who is in beautiful and wears beautiful things. Basically, he's famous for being beautiful. His catch-phrase is "that's beautiful" or "that's not beautiful." There is a working class kid whose mom died -- coking-- and so he eats only raw foods. He's especially in love with raw cabbage. And he can eat ten raw onions...if necessary.

And there's a kid who has a French mom and a Japanese mother. His name is Matthew Perrier. He carries a gem-encrusted spoon which he calls "Amour" and he talks very lovingly to Amour. He speaks Japanese very badly. From what I can see from the sub-titles, it's very bad but I suppose I'd laugh even more if I understood Japanese and see how badly he's messing stuff up. Translations can only go so far. When he first meets his fellow-captives, he says to them, "ME fluent in 5 languages." A lot of the time he talks, what he says -- especially when he says "me"-- is written in CAPS. So, yeah, there's something I'm not getting. He's very cute...in a ditzy dumb pampered can't-do-much-in-the-world-because-he's-so-helpless kind of way... (The guy who is beautiful is more empty-headed, spoiled and vain) and he speaks like a little kid who's always on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

Anyway, they are stuck and they must graduated from this cooking school in order to leave. Slapstick is hard, and sometimes the drama works really well. Sometimes it's just silly because it's hard for kids so young to do over-the-top humor, I think. They're about 17-20 years old, I think. And I stopped watching after awhile. Not really bored, but you have to be in the mood to watch a slapstick film that isn't working as well as it should. (Or in love with one of the cutie actors.) Alas, none of them were there for me. Although it was fun to see a character who was like BEN in Onion.

Oishii Kankei aka Delicious Relationship
A 19 part DRAMA -- not a film.
Yet another foodie flick. With father issues. A rich but not spoiled woman drinks a wonderfully aromatic soup and after her father dies goes to a French restaurant named Petit Lapin where she happens to bump into the same chef who made it 5 years earlier. Basically, her presence is a healing balm to everyone. And there is the arrogant bitter chef who she wants to learn from.

Other stuff going on in this film too. Romances, forbidden, unrequited, etc. The upscale restaurant down the block who takes the customers away from Petit Lapin.

It's very sweet, although slow in parts. And definitely is drama. I have to admit I skipped ahead. So when I got to the last section there were all these sub-plot stories I had missed. But it was sweet. The danger of watching these dramas...alas...skipping ahead.