Katsuhito Ishii has been present on the Japanese (and to a point, international) film scene for 25 years, but he has not really made it. He was closest to the success some 15-20 years ago when he made a winning streak with “The Taste of Tea” (2004) and “Funky Forest” (2005) in both of which he “mixed-and-matched” bits and pieces of genre and art house approach. Since then, he made a few films which met different levels of attention form the critics and the audience, and he practically went missing for almost a decade now. While we are waiting for the announced feature expansion of his 50th anniversary Gamera short (2015), if we still are waiting in fact, why would not we take a glance at his last feature, “Hello! Jun'ichi” (2014), which is a part of a Third Window box set dedicated to him.
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First things first, this is a kiddy film, so it has to rely on some easily explicable tropes. This time, it is about a class of schoolmates forming a band inspired by the unorthodox teaching methods of their new teacher (actually a teaching student doing some months of practice for her college degree), Miss Anna (Hikari Mitsushima of “Love Exposure” fame). The titular character is our narrator, protagonist and focal point, as he grows out of the skin of a shy boy unable to return the eraser to the girl he likes into a more self-confidant fellow.
Basically, think of “The Little Rascals” doing “School of Rock”. And the twist does not really work since the characters have to do the things we would imagine high-schoolers to be doing, but they are also dumbed down to the level of third-graders with naivety that even exceeds that level. Furthermore, their “characterization” is pretty much over after the partly animated introductory montage sequence.
So, the script written by the co-directors Atsushi Yoshioka and Kanoko Kawaguchi (based on a novel by Noriko Ishii) does not work, which can also be said for the directing as a joint effort by the screenwriters and Katsuhito Ishii. The trio actually met on one of Ishii's previous efforts, also parrt of music-themed “Sorasoi” (2009), where Yoshioka and Kawaguchi were actors. The thing is, the hand of an experienced director is almost nowhere to be seen, and complete with not-great-not-terrible, acting by the younger part of the cast that lacks guidance, modest production values, bland camerawork and uninspired editing with an inflation of blacked-out screens that occur too often and last for too long, “Hello! Jun'ichi” seems like, at best, a semi-pro effort.
But actually, it is closer to the level of the elevator pitch from the third paragraph that somehow made it into a movie. On the other hand, maybe the kids would like it better…
