Meitantei Conan Movie 19: Gouka no Himawari

This review do not countains spoilers about this movie, so feel free to read it.

I'm a huge DC fan, that's why after a good 18'th movie, I really hoped to have such a good movie, keeping all this promises, especially with a global "subject" as rich and interesting as the universe of the big painter Vincent Van Gogh.
And after almost 2hours, I've to admit that this movie was... extremely disappointing.
Let's talk about it:

•Story (05/10):
I've to say that, to my eyes, the plot is quite interesting. A strange mixture between a police universe and a paint universe caught my attention.
Nevertheless, after few minutes of the movie, ... we quickly understand that it will not be as interesting as we could thought.
AND THE MAIN REPROACH I have to make on the overall movie, is that everything is COMPLETELY PREDICTABLE. EVERYTIME.
Even if the story would have been able to be well-maded, it's not, cause it's quite confusing.
And it's soooo frustrating! Because if you're a DC fan, you can see lots of good protagonist in there (Kaito Kid and all this stuff, shounen detectiv boys, mouri...), with good intentions to mix them and make them act together...

•Art (06/10):
Without being magnificent and unrefined, the global design is pleasant, reminding us "magic kaito", who has finished recently
However, as all DC movie, expressions are a little bit too accentuated. And I hope that it'll be fixed one day..

•Sound (06/10)
Except the music of the credits which is HORRIBLE (Oh! Rival (オー！リバル)" by Porno Graffitti), the music is good, and does not stand out too much during the movie. Furthermore, it is sensibly well placed in action scenes. I really appreciated it.

•Characters (02/10): (DID NOT COUNT DC USUAL STAFF)
Well. A recurrent problem in DC movies.
The seven Suzuki's samurais are useless and without interest. The plot and the story behind them is bad and not convincing.
Besides, the samurai's plot is badly brought to us (moment when we saw the old lady, and when we saw what happen' whith the paints for example..), and WE CAN NEVER be interested or become identified to them, because they are badly introduced, while they are supposed to have an important part in the movie.
However, they put forward too much the fact that the kid became nasty, whereas it's just obvious that we all know what will really happened and what are the real kid's intentions (without trying to spoiling you, which is difficult, sry)

According to me, the characters (Kid, Conan, Samuraïs...) and the plot CAN NOT GO together, and NEVER seduce us... What a shame...
It could be mooooooore better than that.

•Enjoyment (04/10):
In the end, this movie is boring, because of his predictibility. But I've no problem to watch it and I review it due to my frustration against this obvious clumsy plot.


•Overall (04/10)
It's not a bad movie. But it's a bad DC movie.
It never brings us what we are expecting in a DC movie. And all the fan-service in this movie (cross between Conan and Kid, for example) is heavy and deprived of interest.
Furthermore, the story behing Van Gogh and his painting became boring...
To conclude, I'll say that I recommand you to watch it. To have your own opinion.
But objectively, you CAN NOT SAY that this is a GOOD DC MOVIE.
Now, we are all waiting for the 20th movie!

Thks for reading, and sorry for the language, not my language.

*spoiler free*

As I enjoyed previous Conan movies featuring Kaito Kid, I was really looking forward to this one. Conan movies are not without flaws, but I can usually look past those flaws based on enjoyment alone - but for this movie, not so much.

Let's jam:

Story (3/10)
The story is quite straightforward: the Suzuki family wants to organize an exhibition featuring all of van Gogh's "Sunflower" paintings with the help of a group of hand-picked individuals called the "Seven Samurai", but for some reason Kaito Kid decides to get involved. This in turn causes the police to become involved, as everyone tries to protect the paintings from ... Kid while making sure the exhibition goes off without a hitch.
There were two things that I found annoying about the story: 1) it was not well-executed. It felt like the writers wanted to make the story more interesting by adding random plotlines and events unrelated to the main story, but this only served to make the movie unnecessarily complicated. Since the characterization was weak to begin with, the movie was unable to justify these creative decisions. 2) It was quite predictable. Anyone who is familiar with the Conan franchise can pretty much tell how this story will play out after the first 15 minutes. This can be a good or bad thing depending on how the writers further develop the story, but in this case it definitely did not enhance the viewing experience.

Art (7/10)
The movie was well-animated, employing bright colors and beautiful shots of New York City and Tokyo. The animators also did a great job setting the atmosphere and mood for various scenes. One sequence taking place on an airplane really stood out for its great visuals and intense action.

Sound (5/10)
For the most part, the soundtrack was quite enjoyable and complemented the movie. Not the most memorable soundtrack of all time, but effective nonetheless. I do have to say that the ending song was terrible, and did not belong there at all.

Characters (3/10)
Characters can make or break a movie, and in this case the characters did the latter. We all know that the new characters introduced in a Conan movie are one-shot characters, but the Seven Samurai were boring and generic even for one-shot characters. When the writers tried to utilize them to further the plot, it was rendered ineffective because none of them possess any personality whatsoever. It felt like they were introduced for the sake of the storyline, and then completely abandoned. There was also an old lady character who had some sort of personal connection to one of the Sunflower paintings, but the writers spent extremely little time sketching out her storyline, therefore stripping it of all its emotional value.
On the other hand, it was nice to revisit the rivalry between Conan and Kaito Kid. For some reason though, most of the main characters in the Conan universe play extremely small roles in the storyline and mostly let stuff happen to them, and even Conan doesn't do as much detective work as usual. Kaito Kid may be as charming as always, but the plot doesn't do him any favors as well.

Enjoyment (6/10)
I enjoyed most parts of the movie, especially the action scenes, while other scenes were utterly unenjoyable. I really wanted to like this movie, but I couldn't look past the flimsy plot and ineffective characterization.

Verdict
Out of all Conan movies, this is one of my least favorite, along with the Jolly Roger one. For long-time viewers of Conan, I would recommend re-watching a previous movie featuring Kaito Kid instead of seeing this one. For anyone new to the Conan franchise, I would recommend movie #7 or #10 instead, since both feature well-executed and exciting storylines that also further develop the relationships among the main characters.

I know the team behind Conan can do better than this, so I'll be looking forward to the 20th movie!