Movie Review: Fireworks

Fireworks, Should We See It from the Side or The Bottom? ** / *****

Directed by: Akiyuki Shinbo and Nobuyuki Takeuchi.

Written by: Hitoshi Ône based on the teleplay by Shunji Iwai.

 

You will not believe how many times the teenage characters at the heart of the movie Fireworks discuss whether Fireworks are round or flat. It is a conversation that literally takes up minute upon minute in the film – and circles back to it time and again to have the same conversion. It wasn’t an interesting conversation the first time the kids have it, and by the fifth or sixth you’ll be praying for them to shut the hell up about it already. I don’t think this conversion is the worst element of the film – but it’s certainly the most annoying one, especially since it’s a conversation I won’t forget any time too soon, as it has bore itself into my brain like an ear worm pop song.

 

The movie takes place in 1990s, in small town Japan, and wants to be a combination of science fiction, comedy and love story – and doesn’t get any of them right. The film starts out about a group of male, teenage friends, who have awkward conversions about the girls in their class – as well as their teacher, especially about her large breasts, that the animation in the film perversely leers at. At some point, it turns into a love triangle of sorts, as two of the boys – Norimichi and Yusuke – both fall for their classmate, Nazuna. It is the day of their town’s big, annual fireworks display – that all the characters are going to go see. A lot hinges on a swim race between Norimichi and Yusuke, whoever wins, Nazuna will ask out – and strange, translucent marble – which if thrown really hard while making a wish, will reverse time, to allow whoever holds it – in this case Normichi – to reverse time, and redo what went wrong. He’ll do this several times – all that allows him to try and better help Nazuna, who wants to run away from her dysfunctional family.

 

If all that sounds confusing, and frankly, a little dumb – don’t worry, it’s both. Fireworks is a film that doesn’t really work on any level, except that most of the time, the animation does look pretty good – especially the fireworks themselves, who come at various times in the movie, and always look different than the last time we saw them, because when Norimichi throws his marble, he changes things. The fireworks, he knows, don’t look quite right – which is why he knows he has to restart the timeline again to set things right.

 

The conversation about whether fireworks are round or flat is incredibly annoying – and underlines the theme of the movie again and again and again – that things look different when looked at from a different perspective. The worst thing about the movie though is probably the way it portrays Nazuna, who is essentially a manic pixie dream girl, which is annoying enough because is so clichéd, but is made worse by the fact that the film shows her troubled home life, but never really takes it seriously. As a character, she also changes from scene to scene to be whatever is the most appealing at the time – but she never gets more complex. Norimichi gets to be a hero – again and again – and become even more heroic over time, while she just sits there waiting for him to save her.

 

Honestly, I found most of the movie more annoying than anything. It looks pretty good, but it’s so trite and superficial and silly, and bordering on sexist, that I had trouble taking any of it all that seriously.