The Night Is Short, Walk On Girl - Movie Review

The Night is Short Walk-On Girl is directed by Masaaki Yuasa, the man behind Mind Game, and if you've seen Mind Game, then you have an idea of what to expect from his films. The man is not a fan of anything conventional. His films and TV series don't look like any other anime. He has a very unique style in the way he presents his animation, and his stories are almost all very absurd, strange, and dreamlike, and this film is all of those things. Here we follow Atome, a girl who is extremely good at holding her liquor. She will drink Marion from Raiders of the Lost Ark under the table, and she embarks on a series of strange encounters over the course of one night, and a man named Senpai is lusting after her but is too ashamed to admit it, so he decides to create a series of coincidences so that they run into each other by chance. This film, I thought, was remarkable, for a lot of different reasons. I saw it tonight in a fairly packed theater, actually, because Fathom Events is doing a special two-night release of it, so I got to see it with a crowd, and I've been thinking a lot about how to describe the experience of watching this film and have it be something that you can relate to or understand, because it is so trance-like, and so almost hallucinatory, that it feels like a dream. It feels like I wasn't actually watching it, and that experience I had was so otherworldly that it's almost transported me to a different type of film experience, and it sounds so pretentious when I say that, but it's true. I mean, that's really how I felt. It reminded me of the first couple hours of your day. You know how when you wake up, you might get a shower, you might eat something, maybe you check your emails, and then later in the day, you think about that first hour that you were awake and you were sort of adjusting to being awake, and it's almost like it didn't happen? That's like watching this film. It's so weird and so unique, and I really loved it. And it's the type of movie that, upon reflection, it gets better and better, because you think about the things that are presented. For one thing, Otome's watch moves very slow, whereas almost everyone else's watch, especially the older characters, is moving very fast. And a lot of these characters, they feel very depressed, and they look at life in a very cynical way, whereas Otome looks at life very optimistic. Her night seems to be going a lot smoother than everyone else's, and it's sort of like she's just having fun and enjoying life. And to her, she has all the time in the world, but the older people surrounding her, or those with a more cynical view of life, time is very short and it's fleeting. And she takes that bouncy, happy optimism and infects the people around her with it, and in turn, makes them see life the way she sees life. This film has a lot of humor, typical with a Masaaki Yuasa film, that's very absurd and quite insane. It's nowhere near on the level of Mind Game in regards to surrealistic imagery, but I don't think it's attempting to be that type of film either. I mean, we have dance sequences, we have musical sequences, songs that go on for quite some time that I thought was just drop-dead hilarious. There's a long, drawn-out sequence entirely in someone's subconscious. And yet, somehow, the film continues to be incredibly investing because it's just so arresting, like it's so different and so endlessly unique that you can't really stop looking at it. Which is why it's a little disappointing that sometimes the humor falls back on some anime tropes and cliches. But gratefully, it's really just one in particular that, unfortunately, is one of the most common cliches I've ever seen in comedy anime, and it's a man groping a woman and then getting punched in the face repeatedly. I talked about this just a few months ago in my review for the film Fireworks. It's old. We've been there, we've done that, it's not really funny anymore, it's just old. And this film has that a few times too. But what I also loved about it is that you can interpret it in so many different ways. There is really no concrete interpretation that I think I will ever latch onto. You could look at it through the lens of the pain and confusion of adolescence, like this whole night is just these characters blooming and blossoming into the adults they're going to be one day. I mean, you can see all of this in the narrative and in some of the visuals, and it helps to have a knowledge of the culture that's on display as well, and some of the significance of the things that are in the background of the shots. And there's just so much to glean, and I can't wait to see it again, to be honest. I'm going to give The Night Is Short Walk On Girl an A-. This film will probably leave some people scratching their heads, understandably, especially if you've never seen a Masaaki Iwasa film, his films are very different. But this is the type of just pure inventiveness and creativity that I yearn to see in a movie, especially in animation form. So guys, thank you so much as always for watching. Look forward to more reviews very soon, and if you like this, you can click right here and get Stuckmanized.