Japanese Movie: Family Game

I’ve been taking advantage of the campus media library and renting Japanese movies like crazy.

Recently I checked out The Family Game.

This film is quite goofy. I enjoyed it and recommend it.

To put it simply, The Family Game is a black comedy about a Japanese family who hires a tutor in order to get their youngest son to shape up and get better grades in school. The family hopes that he can pass the entrance exam for a prestigious high school and be as studious as his older brother.

The family is your ultra-stereotypical Japanese family. The father is a salaryman who is only available to dish out the money to pay for the tutor, and to tell his kids to ganbare every so often. The mother worries about her kids private lives in that passively probing way that Japanese mothers do. The older brother is better than the younger at school and the parents urge him to be a role model. The younger kid encounters bullies at school… All the usual stuff. Things get weirder and weirder as the film progresses. It’s as if the common stereotypes are taken to such extremes that things become absurd. It’s really fun to see the wackiness develop.

Not only that, but this movie also features the greatest and most random food fight ever to be caught on film. Love it.

Here is a low-quality trailer found on YouTube.

If you need ideas for Japanese movies to watch, browse through the Slash and Burn blog – that’s where I got the idea to watch this movie!

- Harvey