(Before judging, read the entirety.)
I wasn’t anticipating this. I wasn’t having high expectations for it. I did not even feel one bit of hype. But for some reason, I decided to go out with my friends and watch this movie. Expectations were low, yet this movie still somehow managed to exceedingly dismay me. No I’m being way too generous. This movie just took a full shit on my face, and squandered my precious money and time. As unsurprising as it is, the positive responses are regardless absurd, leaving me no choice but to write lengthily. I want to make it clear that I found the series to be quite okay, and I honestly wasn’t expecting the movie to be any better, if not, worse. And yes, it indeed was, probably tenfold worse. “Rascal Does Not Dream of a Dreaming Girl” is one of the worst movies I’ve ever watched in a very long time. To be honest, I’d never expect this movie to be this awful of an evidently devious disingenuous melodramatic tear-gushing tryhard.
Before this review, as to some opinions, this might seem like a nitpicking review, but no. Neglecting plot holes, poor characterization, etc. and claiming one is avoiding nitpicking is foolish. This will be a full in-depth analysis to thus express why I dislike this movie so much.
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ART:
After the indisputable success of the series and for being only a 90-minute movie, I very much believe us audience deserve better quality than this. It’s basically akin to the series, which isn’t atrocious, just mediocre. Though, I want to particularly point out the awful CGI (human CGI is inarguably one of the worst backgrounds this industry has to offer) as well as the queer 2D drawing in the middle of a 3D background. I might be griping, but I expect a movie’s quality to exceed this. The animation is acceptable most of the time. If anything, my complaint would essentially hinge on some specific off-quality scenes, but I think it was not critical. The art style is never of my liking because I find the character design and color palette dull, but I got used to it eventually so again, it’s fine. In conclusion, everything is average.
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WRITING:
I could not have been moved or impressed by this kind of plot, really. If anything, I was abhorred by the blatantly manipulative story that has no consistency or substance whatsoever. Basically, the movie is in toto a tear-fest where virtually every character has to cascade their interminable rivulet of tears to intimate their insuperable pain for at least not once, but twice, for such is the most subtle and artistic method to present one’s dejected emotions. On serious note, crying should've been powerful and relevantly timed, unlike this lazy and dodgy representation of one's sadness.
The premise is essentially time-travel yet written abysmally. With a bit of non-sense quantum physics blabbering and a few illogical small talks with the smart eye-glassed girl, the idea of time traveling is thereby conceptualized. And it never demonstrates any beforehand conditions and repercussions of time travel, as if the author himself doesn’t know what he is writing about. But that inconsistency aside, I'd like to criticize the approach to this idea itself. Anyone who acknowledges the more or less impenetrable idea called ‘time’ simply understands that time travel necessitates meticulous fictional accounts. By making it so vague and providing so little details, it feels as though the director was trying to make things as feasible as possible, but in a way that viewers would be disabused that it made sense because it said so. In other words, since the movie never fully explains how you time travel but simply derive it from quantum physics and some ambiguous supernatural phenomenon (meaning it would seem sophisticated and condensed), it could trick viewers into thinking that it ultimately makes sense regardless of how non-sensical it might turn out to be (I.e. whenever a ramification arises, we are forced to automatically accept it while simultaneously think “Oh, didn’t know that could happen, I guess time traveling really isn’t all that easy. I must express some meager empathy to the characters now must I not?”). Honestly, everything is just randomly presented without much exposition via this time travel concept, for the sake of plot convenience that completely steers clear of any proper explanation; and I simply could not appreciate the fact that the author would do anything to control the emotions of their audience, in which this case involves a poorly-written premise.
I also notice people have stated how this movie reminded them of some other popular anime such as “The Disappearance of Suzumiya Haruhi” or “Steins;Gate”. It wouldn’t be unjust to call out how this movie plagiarizes a lot of ideas and styles, and I believe it is already quite clear in the first place so I see no point in dissecting the similarities. I guess Kamoshida Hajime should learn something from Tarantino or some successful "stealers" next time. For not only this man's writing resembles just a bit too much with the other successful works viz. literally copying ideas, but he also fails to properly utilize its context. This is effortless and talentless.
The lack of connections betwwen every event is also what I've mentioned. The plot crams so many things and results in various climaxes, which makes it very separating. Though, I think even a plot like this might be more affiliated if the execution is on-point. Not to mention, the movie's philosophy, which is the plausibility of changing one's fate and what measure ought to be taken, can be a decent concept if well-executed. Thus, I will further develop these ideas in the Execution segment.
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CHARACTERIZATION:
Absolutely appalling. I saw zero characterization other than some (once again) manipulative emotional shit from the young Shouko writing her dreams onto a homework paper. The thing about our protagonists is that they are superficial scalloping bods who have no prominent traits, to the point where they are quite undistinguishable. If you think making lecherous jokes about private woman matters is quirky, unique and writing-demanding then you sure have a grave problem, which I won't solve it for you here unfortunately.
Anyway, while it's true that our characters act upon propensity, such is too shallow to be deemed as 'realistic' characterization. As a result, the characters become awkwardly predictable, simple and even unnatural. Meaning every decision a character makes just doesn’t indicate anything remotely noteworthy. I.e. showing all the phases of depression that Sakuta has to undergo, from going to the beach, weeping to sillily shouting “Can anyone save...?”, means nothing. Whilst being established upon propensity, this scene is nothing but a subpar 'conspicuous aka not quite subtle' implication of depression that I find absolutely lazy, dull and clumsily obvious, and such (I believe) over 3-minute long scene does not further develop anything other than characters being sad in an irksomely overdramatic way. Instead of spending time on constant mourning and crying scenes like this (which take up the majority of its runtime), the movie could've made it much more subtle and short, which is far more effectively emotional, and preferably delving further into the characters. It's only obvious to assume that Sakuta would suffer boundlessly without having to show it in the most extreme way, which makes this entire scene futile. It serves no purpose and is handled annoyingly overdramatically and unrealistically, only for the sake of sensationalization, not characterization. What's worse is that the movie attempts to make the characters so facile and faultless that their resemblance to a human is completely nonexistent (and is also why they're so undistinguishable). To be fair, it's impossible to say there is any characterization whatsoever in this movie. And the absence of subtlety comes in every single way possible, prominently in characterization.
And again, I know saying this is redundant at this point, but please, don't just approve how crying automatically suffices characterization. As to my explanation of how the plot misuses and awfully exploits it, this movie is a perfect exemplification of how crying could become a non-thematic and irrelevant device of emotional manipulation rather than good character writing/development (which is nothing superior to your orthodox ill-fitting fan service).
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PACING:
I can rest assured that I’m not the only person to feel that the pacing is all over the place and is never appropriate with the event happening. It's sluggish at parts where I have no idea what's so important (such as all the futile conversations between Sakuta and his friends after a certain death that he chose to let go for it was seemingly out of his capability, all just to show Ah, tranquility is back baby), whereas some important dialogues are unceremoniously bundled. Often times, things happen without any build-up. Awful pacing.
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EXECUTION:
The execution is perhaps the worst factor of all, ruining what could've been an okay movie. To me, it doesn't matter how good the plot is, since if it's poorly executed, then everything already collapses. And truly, this is where the movie fails to deliver anything remotely cohesive or meaningful.
First prominent issue is that structurally, the movie feels like four episodes crammed together, with no coherent, consistent narrative. With probably roughly 3 climaxes (or so) and a handful of endings, being underwhelmed would be an understatement to transcribe my feelings. Essentially, every "fake ending" always tags along with a climax; thus, nothing feels emphasized, taking also the mere 90-minute duration into account. Not to mention I was so confused whenever it "faked" its conclusion. I literally couldn't stop checking the time to confirm whether the "ending" I was seeing was just some sort of funny bamboozlement or not.
That being said, I believe the director focuses way too much on his redundant 'impactful' climaxes with out of the blue twists and yet he still fails to properly do so; also for that matter, he completely disregards the importance of theme impartation. In other words, having so many climaxes in a single movie primarily for the intent of having emotional weight, it really loses its focus on what it really wants to be, or convey. This is why its philosophy doesn't matter. Let's say the themes are sacrifice and love, and the underlying philosophy is the great length taken to change one's fate, which people might bring up to reasonably defend the movie. Now, if the author really wants to express the said ideas, or anything else you could possibly analyze from this movie, then that should've been the focus. Instead, we've spent a large chunk of the movie looking at characters crying and saying they're sad, literally. So regardless of the philosophy, being this excessive about emotional manipulation neglectfully undermines the focal of the story. What's worse is that fate, or sacrifice, or any idea presented in the movie, are such loose and flimsy concepts in this movie. As stated, since nothing has any sort of real exposition to lay a concrete foundation, the author can just do whatever he wants, however stupid. Like conveniently rewriting future by simply "not meeting a certain someone" as if time-travel can just be that easy. This makes the whole "fate", or "sacrifice" idea pointless. It feels underwhelming for bearing so little consequences, opposing the entire philosophy of fate and sacrifice itself. But maybe I'm overthinking, because I honestly just feel like "what we see is what we get". The manipulative execution really makes everything feel superficial after all.
And yet so far I haven’t even nitpicked on trivial stuffs, because it would ineluctably lead to me hate-speeching endlessly (“wtf is that scene where Shouko helpes Sakuta to get on the bed? That is one of the most, if not the most artistically distasteful scene in a movie that takes itself seriously”), but lets not talk about that here. On side note, the jokes are dry as usual, but far more unfunny and cheap. I, unlike many, particularly find it uncomfortably skeptical about the likelihood of Sakuta's lecherous jokes to realistically achieve its magnificent triumph like in this series. I would wholeheartedly recommend people to stop laughing at this jester's unfunny little jokes about woman's body and habits really, for I find it highly unappetizing.
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ENJOYMENT:
I believe there's nothing to be enunciated here. I struggled every second for it to end and cringed every time a character broke down and shed their incessant outpouring of tears. I hated this.
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SOUND:
Boring typical rom-com music, I don’t remember much. Voice acting is actually fairly good.
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TITLE:
I hate the title. All these long ass names that visually and content-wise attract viewers trend should stop. It’s cancerous.
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This is an awful movie, and I would never recommend this movie to anyone, you have my words. I literally can’t imagine how anyone walking out of the theater be crying over this movie (good thing is there's no one in my theater did, even better, most were just laughter). Maybe I’m way too apathetic, but this movie gave me absolutely no emotions that it should’ve given. Or rather, it doesn't really matter, because the sole intent of this entire movie is seemingly to make you sad at any cost. As impassive as I am, I still hope for God's sake the score will get lowered and this will no longer be in the Top 100.
