Genre: comedy
Year: 1992
Length: 105 min
Director: Masauki Suo
Cast: Masahiro Motoki, Misa Shimizu, Naoto Takenaka, Masaaki Takarai, George Smiley
I was lucky to see the movie right after its release in 1993, but I still find it one of the funniest (it’s really funny and can be quoted) and ‘understandable humour wise’ Japanese comedies. The plot can be outlined in the following way: western sports become more and more popular in Japanese universities: baseball, soccer, basketball, football, tennis among them… and professors have to blackmail backward students to staff a sumo section. As a result, they have a typical loser section consisting of two brothers, one of whom looks really gayish, a religious American, a fat grind and a neurotic idealist, and they have a plump girl deeply in love to serve them… the university sumo council consisting of old crazy men one of whom keeps on pinching bottoms of people of both sexes, issues the challenge before them which is to win the ‘enemy university’ which by the way has no problems with the team:) it all becomes a really funny story with a very touching ending:) not a masterpiece, of course, but a very kind and optimistic movie with a touch of an American comedy, the genre I really dislike. It should be mentioned, that this movie was a smashing hit in Japan.