Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

Absolutely the worst movie.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

The acting in this movie is really good.

Youth culture today is much like it was several generations ago in the early 20th century with one significant difference. We live in a more sexually relaxed society today, which is ironically less promiscuous than it was for young adults in the 60's, 70's, and 80's. Indeed, a higher percentage of children today reach their 19th and even 20th birthdays with their virginity than their parents did. It isn't uncommon, if you speak to this minority of young people, to hear outlandish, fantastical, or absurd descriptions of their ideal boyfriend/girlfriend or first sexual encounter. Childhood exposure to "sweet romance" films linger unhealthily and sabotage these older virgins. This is especially true in Japan, where depopulation is a serious social issue.Hirokazu Koreeda's Air Doll is a film about this phenomenon, or I interpret it as one. Unfortunately, any review you read is going to be jaded by the film's abyss of ambiguity. A few of the director's intentions are identifiable, but a lot of it features the titular doll wandering about and experiencing her new human life. These segments are well-filmed and emotionally grounded in a generic childhood discovery theme, lacking the more interesting focal points of the director's other films. The viewer is thus left to apply cultural implications to the film for it to be more than pure cinema.The air doll is an inflatable sex toy owned by a middle-aged man who calls her Nozomi and treats her as his girlfriend. They eat dinner together, walk through the park, and have sex all on his schedule, and he loves her a lot. Nozomi "realizes (she) has a heart" and wakes up one day when her master goes to work. She wanders around for a while, taking everything in, and visits a movie store. She begins working there and falls in love with one of her coworkers. More wonder sequences play, this time featuring the pair's almost-dialog free courtship. On paper it sounds mundane, but lead actress Bae Doona bolsters the emotionality of these scenes with her performance which is reminiscent of a Disney Princess role minus the artificial sentiment. The camera frequently grants us a close ups of her and her boyfriend, encouraging our intimacy with their romance.Koreeda overtly references Disney's version of The Little Mermaid, specifically in Nozomi's observation of a girl who mistakes a fork for a comb. The girl's father tells her that a fork isn't for grooming, which becomes entwined with the narrative when Nozomi punctures herself. Her boyfriend "blows life into her" through her air hole, an indirect form of sexual expression, but Nozomi doesn't understand its implications. This reaffirms the latent misogyny of the many Disney films, where the woman character subtly confuses her psychological needs with those of society and her prince. A perfect conclusion follows: Nozomi stabs her boyfriend in his navel to breathe into him, and he bleeds to death. Her desire for mutual intimacy cannot be realized, and she suffers for it. In her grief, she throws herself in a trash heap.Perhaps Air Doll can thus be seen as an encompassing metaphor for coming social collapse brought about by youth's (Japanese or otherwise) alienation from itself. Beyond the birth rate decline, people are more likely to encourage their perversions when they are entirely alone. Watching contrived romantic films only worsens an already vulnerable populace's efforts to get what it wants, at some level.Recommended

This is a movie about a sex doll. A sex doll that comes to life and mimics human behavior and grows a heart and learns (spoiler!) to love. Now if you're like me, you might think that that's a laughably stupid premise. And maybe that could be a good thing! Maybe a movie about a sex doll's magical crash course in humanity could satirize an overplayed genre trope, have a few laughs, and maybe muster some heart in spite of its absurdity!Hirokazu Koreeda doesn't seem to think so. His laughless plastic person drama Air Doll fancies itself a whimsical portrait of love and loneliness that--whoa ho ho!--might just have something to say about the human condition. He plays this stupid idea completely straight, and the result is an overlong, self-congratulatory pile of witless quirk and existential platitudes so over the top that it would be right at home in the filmography of Trey Parker and Matt Stone.It's a shame, because Air Doll features a compelling performance from Bae Doona as the sex doll, and it flirts with some interesting ideas--maybe the line between us and the refuse around us is a bit more arbitrary than we'd like to admit, etc.--but the film ultimately completely undermines any potential philosophical weight it might have had through its utter lack of any semblance of self-awareness.The film puts an embarrassing amount of effort into establishing the sex doll as innocent and naive and just the most precious thing you ever done saw--look, the sex doll thinks the city is beautiful! look, the sex doll is holding hands with children! this isn't completely effing ridiculous, it's adorable! right? right?And then, before it's even mastered language, the sex doll starts musing on the nature of existence through suddenly omniscient voice-over, because yeah, I guess it's narrating this thing all of the sudden.And then, character after character starts to notice that hey, you know what, we're not so different you and I, sex doll. Humans and sex dolls that is.And I could enjoy this movie--hell, I could love this movie, seeing as I have a capacity for irony that the filmmaking team apparently lacks--but then this movie starts rolling out the "big moment" ham fisted emotional beats, and none of it hits me at all. This movie just simply fails to make me feel anything, and it makes its intentions so clear, and it tries so damn hard, and it's aiming for tears every ten minutes and I just cannot take this sex doll odyssey seriously.Idunno, maybe Air Doll has a future as a really bad cult movie; all I know is that it has a present as a really bad bad movie. -TK 9/7/10

If you're thinking: "Oh, those wacky Japanese. A movie about a blow-up doll who, keenly aware that her function is to provide sexual pleasure, comes to life. That'll be fun!", you will be surprised, if not disappointed, by this film. Du-na Bae does a few scenes in her birthday suit, and spends most of the rest of the film in cute little outfits with very short skirts—one of them being the maid's uniform you see in the poster—but there isn't much that's erotic, let alone prurient, about this film at all. It's sad and melancholy. And innocent.There are three things that contribute to the superbity (yep, I'm going with it) of this film. The first is the cinematography by Mark "Pin Bing" Lee. Remember that name. If he's the director of photography on a film, you can count on it at least looking good. The second is the soundtrack by World's End Girlfriend—which is actually just one guy who specializes in other-worldly noise experiments with hints of jazz and classical. His work here creates a hip, contemporary, and dreamlike atmosphere, and since this is a film about the emptiness and isolation of modern life, it's a good thing. The third contributing factor is the masterstroke of casting Du-na Bae as the Air Doll. It's hard to think of another actress who could have made such a success of the role. Bae is a fearless, talented, versatile actress and she also somewhat looks the part with her large expressive anime inspired eyes. She's also Korean, giving her a head-start playing a fish out of water in this Japanese film. There are few actors who can convincingly run through a range of several emotions in a matter of seconds without moving a muscle in their faces. Bae is one of those actors, and she does it often.The film starts right off with the Air Doll inexplicably "finding a heart" and coming to life. She sneaks out during the day, while her owner is at work, to discover the world and its characters. She gets a job at a video store and when one day she accidentally cuts herself, and starts losing air instead of bleeding, a co-worker who seems completely non-plussed by the event puts a piece of tape on the tear and blows her back up. They fall in love. If there is one sexy scene in the film, in a sort of convoluted way, it's when the two "make love". The guy wants to take off the tape and watch her lose air and then watch her re-animate by blowing her up again. When the Air Doll wants to do the same by cutting the guy, things don't turn out as she expects. Bae plays the scene in a very convincing way.Air Doll has a slow pace and a number of characters seem to just float by without explanation but when it's all over they will have made sense. The central conceit of the film doesn't hold up to scrutiny if you think about it too much so if any of these kinds of things bother you, take a pass. There is also an extended scene where the Air Doll meets her maker. The director seems to have wanted to use this meeting to explain the film, "Aren't we all just empty vessels"? Although the scene is a touching one, I could have done without it, not only because it would have tightened up the film, but also because I don't like it when directors make beautiful films and muck them up with verbal explanations of what they are trying to present metaphorically.

Koreeda Hirokazu's newest film "Kuki Ningyo AKA Air Doll" is a brilliant and sobering look at life, alienation and loneliness in modern society. Its fantastical story while unconventional delivers a powerfully emotional story that will certainly have a lingering effect on viewers. The story seems like the plot of a Japanese AV (Adult Video) or anime - a blowup sex toy one day miraculously comes to life after gaining a "heart/soul" (kokoro). Her owner is a lonely middle aged waiter named Hideo (Itao Itsuji) who lovingly talks to the doll whom he named " Nozomi" and thinks of her as his companion and lover. While Hideo is at work, Nozomi (portrayed by the talented Korean actress Bae Du-Na) ventures out into the real world with childlike curiosity and wonder. During one of her outings she encounters Junichi, a friendly video shop clerk (handsome fashion model turned actor ARATA/Iuchi Arata). It is love a first site and Nozomi decides to work for Junichi and his boss, Samezu (Iwamatsu Ryo). Nozomi's unbelievable naiveté and awkwardness doesn't seem to bother Junichi and he soon educates Nozomi on life and human interaction through foreign movies and TV. As Nozomi falls deeper into love for Junichi, she becomes more distant and colder to Hideo (who is oblivious to her adventures and newfound sentience). The bond with Junichi becomes even stronger when he discovers her secret and saves her life after Nozomi develops a gash in her body (causing air to escape from her body). However, Nozomi's happiness soon fades as fate deals her a number of setbacks and a tragic error in judgment soon shatters her life forever.While comparisons to Craig Gillespie's 2007 film "Lars and the Real Girl" (and perhaps even in a looser sense 1987's "Mannequin") are likely, "Air Doll" is more like a companion piece to that film and also goes beyond just dealing with a man's obsession with an artificial girl but explores the greater question of how people deal with loneliness and alienation. In fact amid Nozomi's quest to learn humanity, she encounters various people along the way who cope with loneliness in different ways (a senior who is at peace in the twilight of his life; a woman who tries in vain to regain her youth; a young woman who binges on food to fill her void; a refined woman who involves herself in every little aspect in her neighborhood). As in his previous films especially "Dare Mo Shiranai" and "Maboroshi" Koreeda has a knack at exploring the lives of ordinary people and creating drama out of the mundane and ordinary. The screenplay (adapted by Koreeda and based on Goda Yoshiie's short manga story "Goda Tetsukaku Dou - Kuki Ningyo/Goda's Philosophical Discourse - Air Doll") very much captures author Goda's quirky and satirical commentary on love and society but Koreeda adds in the human aspects and supplements the story with a remarkably touching look at love and humanity.Bae Du-Na's (Host, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance) performance is endearing and lovely. Since her first Japanese film debut "Linda Linda Linda" Du- Na has become even more confident in her Japanese language abilities and is able to project likable girlish charm in her role as Nozomi. Du-Na tackles the role of Nozomi with impressive boldness (she appears naked in a good portion of the film)and yet she doesn't make Nozomi sleazy or dirty in the least and in fact portrays her in a almost childlike fashion. ARAKA is also good in his role but doesn't really bring much to the table other than being a nice guy character who is incredibly tolerant of Nozomi and all her bizarre quirks (his Jyunichi character doesn't even show any terror or shock at the site of Nozomi deflating in front of him or in the fact that Nozomi has an air tab in her bellybutton). Odagiri Joe (Shinobi, Tokyo Tower) who makes a cameo appearance as Sonoda, Nozomi's kindly manufacturer and "father" also puts in a great albeit short performance. When Odagiri's character asks Nozomi if she regrets gaining a soul, it is a touching and tearful scene.Much has been said of Taiwanese cinematographer Pin Bing Lee's (Flight of the Red Balloon; The Sun Also Rises) glorious and vibrant photography and indeed it is impressive. The film looks wonderful and has an almost fairy tale quality about it. "Air Doll" could have focused on the obsession with finding virtual and artificial love and the bizarre and perverted fascination with "Real Dolls" and other sex toys but thankfully Koreeda opted to instead focus on the loneliness and other human conditions that force humans into seeking love and affection however artificial. "Air Doll" is a reflective yet tragic story of a doll who somehow was blessed to find a soul but who ultimately fell victim to all the heartaches that came with it - ironic that while Nozomi was created to fill the void and sexual needs of others yet yet was ultimately unable to achieve that need herself.