Yaji & Kita: The Midnight Pilgrims (2005)

Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

One of those strange films that I like but find difficult to say 'why' exactly. Surreal, touching, bizarre, obscure, confusing, culture-bound - but also laugh-out-loud funny in parts. Having read other reviews I am not sure how much of the film I got, but this film had its moments, including strong performances all round, a distinctive look and feel based on clashing modern and Edo themes and strong primary colours, and a convincing love story propping it all up. I'd recommend it to anyone who has spent any time in Japan or feels an affinity with the place. I can only guess at what audiences with no experience of Japan would make of it. Probably not very much...

Don't watch this movie. Or at least, if you do, prepare for disappointment. Yes, you may have heard this movie is brilliant. It may be, but you and I won't get it. This is a movie made for the Japanese, and unless you're well versed in Japanese pop-culture, you won't get the vast majority of the jokes. And I mean VERY well versed - not just an occasional J-pop fan or even a manga or anime freak. Many of the jokes in this movie are obscure Japanese pop-culture references that even the typical Japanese person won't get. Yes, the subtitles will help you follow the plot, but the plot is largely irrelevant, as most of the humor depends on pop- culture references that are impossible to convey to a foreign audience. And, as an earlier reviewer mentioned, there are a few Japanese-language puns that you won't get either. Don't worry, these wouldn't be funny if you did get them, unless you have the same quirky appreciation of puns as the Japanese. But the bulk of the humor here isn't language-specific, it's culture-specific, and even if you speak Japanese you could be left clueless. Think of it as a Japanese version of The Simpsons or Spaced - for someone who doesn't get the pop-culture references, it would be difficult to appreciate the brilliance of these shows. Yaji-san and Kita-san is probably brilliant in much the same way, but without the cultural background, it comes off at best as just bizarre, and at worst as just juvenile silliness. That said, it isn't hard to appreciate Yaji-san and Kita-san's absurdist roots, and fans of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead or even Monty Python should be able to appreciate the spirit if not the content of Yaji-san and Kiya-san. In fact, for Python fans, there are even a few times when you may find yourself laughing while your Japanese friends sit and wonder what's so funny - watch for a clever reference to Monty Python's Search for the Holy Grail, for example. These times are few and far between, however, and for the most of the film you will probably just find yourself scratching your head, wondering what the hell is going on.Michael

Three years ago I read Ikku Jippensha's novel Hizakurige, or Shank's Mare, for one of my Japanese history classes. I comparison to some of the other books in the class the long tale of Yaji and Kita was quite entertaining if a bit long. During the Edo period townsmen and rich farmers were able to travel more freely so there was a demand for travel guides. Therefore a number of guides for inns, sites of interest, teahouses, etc. began to appear. Unlike many of the writers, Ikku Jippensha took it upon himself to create a "guide" that was also a quite comedic story. It was in this miasma of budding plebeian literature and tourism that Yajirobei and Kitahachi, Yaji and Kita for short, were born. Consisting of passages in which the protagonists mock samurai, hit on girls, and tour the sites along to Tokaido Road Shank's Mare is an entertaining read not only for Japanese literature, but for those who just enjoy humorous literature as well.Now warp to the year 2005 and put the rapscallion duo of Yaji and Kita into the hands of director Kankuro Kudo. Still dressed in townsmen attire, Kita sports a bleached topknot and has a heroin addiction. Concerned about the health of his friend and lover, there are hints that Yaji and Kita were lovers in some of Jippensha's later stories, Yaji forces his drugged up friend that he needs to go to Ise in order to clean up, so they hop upon Yaji's motorcycle and make their way to Ise. They almost reach their destination when a police officer makes them return to Edo and hike along the Tokaido road to reach their destination.Like the novel, Yaji and Kita stop at a number of inns, but instead of detailed information concerning the food of each inn, the viewer is treated to middle-aged women being accosted by the God of Laughs, a girl whose singing is so bad Mt. Fuji hazes over, a gaggle of school girls, including one ganguro, who are the fan club of a mafia boss, King Arthur, a bartender and his wife who has become half mushroom, etc. Obviously the film ranges from the comedic to the outright bizarre. At some points it is so bizarre that suspension of disbelief is destroyed. However, the comedic effects of the film are able to draw one back in and make it worthwhile to sit through the two hour plus film.Definitely not for the prude, there is one scene in which Yaji stretches Kita's nut sack a few feet and then bites it and the ending theme is a song titled "I Want to be Your F*ck" by the Zazen Boys, Yaji and Kita: The Midnight Pilgrims is definitely good for a few laughs and even more "Oh my God" moments.

Be sure not to miss this most irreverent "jidai-geki" (period piece) from first-time director Kudo Kankuro. Loosely based on an earlier movie about two men escaping their wives, the postmodern treatment of the subject is indeed a treat. As one critic in Japan commented, the director must have been drunk while filming -- offbeat isn't quite the word, and off-the-wall goes only so far. But if you've ever wanted to see Tetris with dead people floating down the river on rafts, anachronism at the most unexpected times, or just shut off your brain and enjoy a movie which is really impossible to follow, Yaji and Kita's Midnight Pilgrimage will not disappoint. It's half-serious way of dealing with, in the best road movie traditions, two gay lovers, one a drug addict popping blue pills, make their way from medieval Edo to Ise and then when you least expect, burst out the absurd (motorcylces, TV shows, modern-day Tokyo). The translations occasionally fell flat (since the movie includes a lot of verbal jokes in Japanese) or were just plain unintelligible, but watching the miniature Tamiya tankers roll by needs no translations. So, sit back and enjoy the ride.