Forum - View topicREVIEW: Hal BD+DVD
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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I'll just copy-paste what I previously wrote about it.
It's not that I don't approve of what it was trying to do, and it's not that I don't approve of that sort of thing in general. It's just that the movie pulls it off so badly that it plain doesn't work. Also highly problematic is the setting, which apparently is super-advanced yet also has anachronisms from the nineteenth century. Make up your mind goddammit. Hmm, let me see, what else can I say. Oh. The runtime is a problem but the movie was doing fairly well up to the forty-five-minute mark. Then it just got dumb. Like, they threw all the good emotional stuff out the window for exploring Hal's daft and implausible backstory and some boring action scenes. |
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Shay Guy
 Posts: 2115 |
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I'm pretty sure the robot is named Kyuichi, not Kyouichi -- as in the Q-001 printed on its frame.
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Tanteikingdomkey
 Posts: 2346 |
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I watched this movie almost a year ago and I am still highly upset about its last minute twist. spoiler[hal is actually the human and she was the robot]
I would have been OK/happy with it if it were not for one major problem. The movie flat out lies to the audience within the first minute, and even worse when you go back and look at the lie it makes absolutely zero sense why the characters would say that and has a flashback to the scene with completely new writing because opps we screwed up or thought the audience was to dumb to notice or care about it. |
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vashfanatic
 Posts: 3489 Location: Back stateside |
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Am I allowed to guess the twist from the premise? spoiler[Kyouichi really is her human boyfriend Hal, he just believes he's a robot from head trauma from the plane crash, and it's all therapy for him.] I may be way off, but that's my guess.
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ailblentyn
 Posts: 1688 Location: body in Ohio, heart in Sydney |
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Thanks for this even-handed review. The ending seemed to generate general rage to a point where trying to do a fair review seems like a bit of an act of defiance!
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Fronzel
Posts: 1906 |
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Actually slightly less annoying than the right answer. |
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corinthian
Posts: 264 |
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Ha, called it. Good to see Chris Burnett getting more prominent work though. You'd think a guy who played Romeo would play at least a few more romantic leads. |
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Shay Guy
Posts: 2115 |
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I only watched it once, when Funimation was streaming the English dub. I can't remember any point where it didn't play fair. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11349 |
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Very much this. I'm usually delighted when a movie or series can pull of a twist like that and I go back and see how it was right in front of me, but when I went back to listen to the set up again, nope, they cheated. I can't remember the exact dialog anymore, so it might just be a problem with translation into English, but it struck me as making no sense. |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18187 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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I saw this first in fansubs, so I knew about the gimmick. This time around I watched it with an intense focus on trying to ferret out any place where one could call "shenanigans" on what the movie was doing, but there isn't any. The writing and scene framing was pretty careful to set up the gimmick from the very beginning. My only point of contention was that spoiler[it seemed unrealistic that Kurumi's body would look so intact if she died from a plane exploding in mid-air and then crashing. I mean, I know funeral home operators can work wonders with dead bodies, but still]. Oh, and for the person getting picky about the spelling: pretty sure that the spelling I used was what was in the official subtitles. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11349 |
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Since you spelled it both ways, you're covered no matter which is right.
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Araki
Posts: 382 |
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There was no cheat as they didn't change anything in the Japanese dialogue; no rewrites, nothing. The only problem with the twist is that it doesn't translate well, as it's hard to convey the lines in English at the beginning without spoiling it. |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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There's also the fact that spoiler[Hal believed himself to be a robot, which is really dumb when you think about it. And even if he had somehow blocked out his memories of Kurumi and his past, he should still know what money is and how to do simple everyday tasks.] |
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andyos
ANN Associate Editor
Posts: 262 |
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IMO, this was a much better treatment of the same themes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_Right_Back_(Black_Mirror) [edit] Drat, the link doesn't go to the right place because I can't highlight the bracketed bit. As an alternative, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Black_Mirror_episodes has the synopsis ('Be Right Back' is the 4th episode down) and you can get to the link from there. |
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Tanteikingdomkey
Posts: 2346 |
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Maybe they did not do it in the offical version but when I saw it they had two separate translations with the spoiler[gender of the person being addressed] changed. That is highly important and even if they didn't intend that to happen. I would still call at the very least lazy gotcha writing on the part of the writers. I normally love plot twist and mysteries are my favorite genre. That said I can't stand the twist in this movie. Among other reasons it tries to spoiler[redeem a character that I felt it demonized very well and then never goes back and does the necessary work to redeem that character]. to me it came across as cheap and a middle finger to the audience in a way few have managed to do I think. |
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