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Cast/Crew
Japan
director
Suzuki Masayuki
script
Fujiko Fujio
Maggie
cast list
Shingo Katori
... Kenichi
... Kemumaki/Satoh
... Midori
... Kurokage
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X Nin: Ninja Hattori-kun" belongs in the recent trend of Japanese
cinema translating popular manga and anime properties to the big screen
with a wink and a nod. Unlike their American counterparts, the Japanese
take the approach that ninjas and girls in skimpy outfits who fight crime
can't possibly be taken seriously, so it's best to just stick the tongue
in the cheek and run with it. To a certain extent, this worked with "Cutie
Honey", and worked even better with Takashi Miike's stab at
family comedy, "Zebraman".
The latter film managed a noticeably easier mesh of comedy and the
surreal, offering up a pleasantly entertaining (albeit much too long)
movie.
"Ninja Hattori-kun"
is less surreal than "Zebraman", and doesn't seem quite as aware
of its inherent kitsch factor as "Cutie Honey". Also, despite
the promise of ninja action (it is a movie about a ninja, after all),
there's actually not a whole lot of action in the film. There's a ninja
battle at the movie's climactic sequence, but it's mostly ruined by the
director's insistence on stopping and starting the action in spurts to
accommodate the film's awkward scripting. The ending is also ruined by an
attempt at "universal truth" plotting, the same thing that made
"Cutie Honey" something of an unintentional laugher at the end
of its run.
Much of "Ninja Hattori-kun" is actually a
PG family picture about Kenichi, a school kid with emotionally absent
parents, who has no self-confidence. That changes when Hattori (Shingo
Katori) literally flies into his bedroom window and offers himself up as
Kenichi's servant. You see, Hattori, along with his father, is the last of
their kind -- the Iga Ninja. Although the movie is set in present day
Japan, Hattori and his father lives out in the countryside, where they
make a home inside a cave behind a waterfall. Sent into the city to take
his final test, Hattori is ordered not to show himself to anyone but his
Lord, lest he fail in his quest to become a real ninja.
In the city, Hattori spends his time hiding out from
Kenichi's parents and getting addicted to mayonnaise on rice while Kenichi
is off at school. Meanwhile, sinister ninja Kurokage, who belongs to a
rival ninja sect, is going about town beating up his fellow ninjas, who
have all since retired into normal routine life.
"Ninja Hattori-kun" stars Shingo Katori, a
popular singer in Japan. Katori does fine in the role, not that he's asked
to do a lot. The character spends much of the film mugging for the camera
and racing to and fro hiding from people. As mentioned, the movie's only
real action scene takes place in the Third Act, when Hattori has to battle
Kurokage with help from ex-ninja Kemumaki, who has since retired to become
a teacher. As luck (and convenient plotting) would have it, Kemumaki is
also Kenichi's new teacher (the old teacher having gone on maternity
leave), which offers up opportunity for Hattori and Kemumaki to renew
their rivalry, the two men having known each other from the past.
Directed by Suzuki Masayuki, "Ninja
Hattori-kun" is wall-to-wall special effects, and nary a one looks
realistic enough to past the smell test. But as the movie is based on a
popular cartoon, and has declared itself as a spoof on ninja movies from
frame one, less-than-realistic special effects and CGI work plays right
into the filmmakers' hands. Even so, one does wish the effects could have
been better instead of relying almost exclusively on obvious green screen
work. The film's best effects moments are when Hattori disguises himself
in whatever surrounding he's in. The rest of the time Hattori is bouncing
about the screen like Wile E. Coyote -- only less convincing.
As a comedy, "Ninja Hattori-kun" elicits
some chuckles, but that's about it. It's not overly funny, and the film's
stab at "fish out of water" comedy seems perfunctory. At one
point, Hattori asks if the news reporter in the TV lives in the TV,
reminding me of the Unfrozen Caveman skit that Phil Hartman used to do on
"Saturday Night Live". The news anchors are also involved in
another running gag: one of them is a woman who just stares blankly at the
camera, while her male partner delivers the news in an ultra serious,
ultra mechanical monotone voice. This is very creepy, but definitely not
funny. The other running gag is for a soda drink with a silly name that
runs out of steam around the 20th time the filmmakers tried to
squeeze comedy out of it.
The film's family elements work slightly better,
mostly because there seems to be an earnest attempt at teaching the kids
in the audience a lesson about believing in one self. The first hour is
almost exclusively devoted to Kenichi's problems, which ends with him
using a ninja trick to win a game of (and I'm just guessing here) kick the
can, thus winning over his antagonistic schoolmates. If you were looking
for an uplifting, innocent family drama to convince your kids to believe
in themselves, the first hour of "Ninja Hattori-kun" should do
the trick.
As popcorn entertainment goes, "Ninja
Hattori-kun" doesn't completely stink up the joint. Without a doubt,
there could have been much more actual ninja action, or at least more
attention paid to the ninja plot. The film oftentimes feels like an
Afterschool Special that ran off the track when someone got the bright
idea to add ninjas into the mix. There's a lot of ninja posing and faux
ninja action, and what should have been the film's climactic ninja battle
turns into 20 minutes that are so poorly paced they seem like 2 hours of
dead air.
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