I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

This was an absolute delight from start to finish. Beat Takeshi made me laugh my socks off, and brought tears to my eyes when Kikujiro had poignant moments of insight and pathos. The chemistry between him and little Masao was pitch-perfect throughout the whole film, and the story itself built very naturally and beautifully.My husband and a male friend of ours thought it would be too sappy for them (and opted for Mongol, which I had also rented). Thanks to Takeshi-san and his superb comic sensibility, I can now set their opinions straight.As another user mentioned, this absolutely knocks a film like Lost in Translation out of the runnings. (Coppolla never seems to have grasped anything fully beyond Virgin Suicides anyway) There is something about this particular type of pacing in films that only Japanese directors can achieve. Any attempts by Westerners ends up as a mere pastiche.

Takeshi Kitano is a very well known name for me and I'm a big fan of his work however thinking in the subject I have seen only 3 films, 2 of them directed by him (Kids Return and Brother) and the other just with him as actor (Battle Royale). Then I have the world of Kitano still to discover and certainly I really liked those 3 films and now "Kikujiro" was not the exception. It is one of the most unique yakuza films I have seen if you can consider it a yakuza film just because the character Kikujiro (Kitano) was a yakuza. He is a great and strange character, he can be a total a****** and a good friend and thanks to Masao (Yusuke Sekiguchi) we are going to watch both sides of Kikujiro. Masao is the protagonist of the film, a young boy who lives only with his grandmother, they used to be neighbours of Kikujiro and his wife. Summer arrives so school and other activities are over then Masao will be alone. His best friend is going out, everybody from his soccer practices is also on vacations and his grandmother works. But then Masao thinks again in his mother, who according to his grandmother is working far for him, and now he has an address. For Masao's fortune Kikujiro and his wife found him when some teenagers were robbing him just when he was going to see his mother. The wife of Kikujiro gave them money, she felt sorry for the young boy and now her husband is taking the young boy to see his mother. Here begins the unique journey."Kikujiro" is a very strange, touching, sad and funny film, certainly is hard to know what's next in the journey of Masao and Kikujiro and I just loved that. Just the journey started you watch them at the cycle track. Kikujiro is betting and at once Masao said to him the winner combination so they returned just to lose money, Masao never said another winner combination. If that wasn't enough to complicate the journey, Kikujiro's criminal actions will help to make things a little more complicated. A fine scene to can define Kikujiro is when they are inside a taxi, the taxi driver stops to pee or something but he doesn't stop the taximeter action that makes Kikujiro angry enough to steal the taxi, not a single minute after the taxi driver went outside, just to be without a car by the next morning. Things are more difficult for both Masao and Kikujiro after they are at a very expensive hotel, after that they are without any money trying to find someone who drives them to their destination, now Masao is seeing how strange is Kikujiro but also becoming a friend. This unique journey have many moments I loved, one of them reminds me the Charles Chaplin short film "The Immigrant" (at a bus stop Kikujiro steals food from a man, both Kikujiro and Masao are very hungry but Kikujiro gives -apparently- all the food to the young boy and says so him something like "don't worry, adults must make sacrifices for the little ones". Then Kikujiro goes to the back of the bust stop to pee but he went there just to eat his part of the food!), some of them are extremely funny (Kikujiro trying to imitate a trick with oranges that a woman made, for example), some of them are difficult moments, moving moments, sad moments and magical moments. Happened what we could expect was going to happen with the mother of Masao (at one point we see how Masao and Kikujiro shared a similar situation, both were very close t their mothers but at the same time both were very far from them) but Kikujiro brings the magical moments, both are now there to really help the other and at one point Kikujiro will join other adults, that they and we meet before, and they will become kids and together with Masao they will share fun moments. Finally, I loved this Kitano film, for me is a near masterpiece that can surprise you. Maybe your girlfriend doesn't liked the film Brother or the film Battle Royale but believe me, she will love this one.

From its hauntingly beautiful soundtrack by Joe Hisaishi to the wonderful characters who inhabit Takeshi Kitano's magical Japan - everything in this movie comes together to make this one of modern cinema's truly underrated masterpiece.The story involves a petty thug, Kikujiro, who is coerced into accompanying a young boy, Masao, on his cross country journey to find his birth mother. Along the way they meet a whole host of characters. Some friendly, some mysterious, some quirky, some abrasive, but all of them refreshingly human.A lesser writer or director would have settled for a quick dose of weirdness from the main characters' fellow wanderers, but Takeshi Kitano milks them for all of the depth and endearment that the too few minutes we are graced with their presence allows.If you enjoyed the whimsical, go-nowhere feel of Lost in Translation, you will LOVE this movie. In my opinion Beat Takeshi's efforts blow Sophia Coppola's out of the water.Nine out of ten.

Takeshi Kitano plays Kikujiro, a combative, ne'er-do-well drifter who is badgered into taking a young boy, Masao, from Tokyo to Toyohashi to meet his mother--for the first time ever.Someone with a little money and with what passes these days for common sense could get there in maybe an hour by bullet train. Kikujiro and Masao take the, umm, scenic route.Anyone who has spent much time in Japan may be feeling "natsukashii" (nostalgia...well, not quite) well before the halfway point. What would, with a sensible adult guide, be an utterly forgettable day trip, is stretched out into a week or more, and becomes a complete summer vacation for Masao, with all that this entails in Japan--the summer festival, swimming in the ocean, the suika-wari game of blindfolded watermelon-bashing (with an amusing variation here), and so on. The "summer vacation" aspect is emphasized by the intertitles introducing each segment, which are presented as photos, complete with captions, that the boy might have taken on a real vacation.The basic structure--the adult-child road trip--has been done before, of course (and a trailer for Central Station is included on the DVD). Some of the concerted attempts by the motley collection of adults to amuse Masao in the last quarter of the movie are rather too contrived. But this is, on the whole, a good-hearted movie (...somewhat rare for Kitano) that managed to make all of us smile....really, though, the title should have been "Masao no natsu", Masao's Summer Vacation.