Comedy

Trick: The Movie movie review he-said-she-said

HE SAID:
I’ve been promising this one for near four months now, and Christmas Break seemed as good a time as any to finally get this done.

When it comes to theatrical turns by popular television shows, the result more often than not leaves both fans and newcomers oddly unsatisfied. Oftentimes these assume a too-high familiarity on the part of the audience with the characters, or simply a story that, aside from being longer than normal, would have been right at home in the series’ small screen setting. Now, not being familiar with the original Trick television show, I cannot say how this film’s story compared to those weekly outings. On the newcomer front, however, I can say that Trick: The Movie proves a surprising success, as this film version entertained without ever leaving me feeling truly out of the loop.

In Trick, Yukie Nakama plays Naoko, an aspiring but unknown and struggling magician. Following a particularly light-attended performance, Naoko is approached by two country bumpkins and invited to come to their town. You see, the villagers there believe their town to be threatened with impending doom at the hands of a giant turtle god; their only hope at defusing the panic revolve around her posing as a goddess, demonstrating her tried and true magic tricks as supernatural powers, and thereby reassuring the townsfolk of their safety. Being faced with a recent and massive rent increase, and herself knowing of a historical example where such a ruse worked successfully, she gladly accepts.

Upon arriving, however, she finds she is not the only poseur god in town, but in fact the fourth, with each previous god demonstrating a mastery of supernatural skill. This all may or may not have to do with an odd bit regarding legendary lost Tokugawa treasure possibly hidden in the town, or at least one of its toilets (you’ll see), which in addition to the self-proclaiming gods has drawn any number of enterprising characters (including Naoko’s longtime mathematician boyfriend, Mr. Ueda). And so the conundrum arises: To save the day Naoko will have to expose and debunk the other poseurs’ tricks while concealing her own. Doing so will not only net the townspeople some much needed peace, but possibly net her a nice piece of treasure in the process.

In terms of tone, Trick is something of a mashup of adventure-comedy, educational science show, and supernatural drama. The picture is heavy on laughs, despite its rather creepy village setting (echoing those of survival horror classics, Fatal Frame and Resident Evil 4), with much of the humor coming from oddball situations engineered by the town’s strange and superstitious inhabitants. There are a few very strange, and possibly disturbing (ie: the turtle fortune telling scene) sequences, but more often than not these setups had me laughing out loud at their preposterous and unexpected outcomes.

But there’s actually more to Trick than goofy comedy and creepy locales. Hands down one of the coolest aspects of the movie is its reliance on problem solving using discrete mathematics, probability, combinatorics, ciphers, and classic hacking difference attacks (ie: password inference via a linear attack). I know the average viewer might not notice or even care about these things, but being a proud math minor, seeing these textbook problems and their solutions played out on screen made me giddy.

However, being an extension of an established television show, Trick is not without its narrative hiccups. The picture does lose a bit of momentum toward the end, throwing in a few characters from the television show for fan familiarity at the expense of logic. In fact, the whole last quarter of the film feels a bit slap-shod, as if thrown together by a committee. Characters pop up suddenly out of nowhere, to save the day from similarly erupting problems, while romance flourishes as if sweeps week depended on it. Still, these oddball elements weren’t enough for me to abandon my enjoyment of the film.

In the acting corner Trick is fairly solid. The picture stars two of Japan’s most popular (and attractive) actors, so acting talent really plays a secondary role to stargazing. Still, both its leads do Yukie Nakama (G@ME, Oh-Oku: The Women of the Inner Palace), always cute, does a decent job as Naoko. Granted, she’s had more than her fair share of time playing the character on TV, but the character’s rebellious, headstrong nature felt true to form. True, my judgment may be clouded by my fandom, but in this picture I found her to very funny. Hiroshi Abe (Survive Style 5+, Bubble e Go!) plays her mathematician boyfriend Ueda. His character is self serving, egoistic, with a hint of superheroic delusion. In short, he’s a perfect spark for Naoko’s flaring temper.

Finally, Trick also boasts some interesting cinematography. Every shot seems skewed or tilted off kilter, every subject placed exactly opposite of what you would expect, adding to the surreality and absurdity of every situation (In fact, the whole thing reminded me of old vid-capture Sierra Adventure games). These are definitely not your standard everyday beautiful compositions, but they are nonetheless refreshing.

In closing, Trick isn’t a great film, but it was highly enjoyable. I’ve now watched it one and a half times, and found many of the jokes hold up under a second viewing. I’m definitely interested in checking out the original series, as well as Trick 2.

SHE SAID:
Trick sure is funny, full of one-liners and cartoonish slapstick (i.e.: people clumsily falling flat on their face), yet it took a drastic dramatic dive near the end. It was almost like a sampling of apexes from a dozen different failed drafts, heavy on the “pop quiz” element (blind-sided additions inserted from previously glossed over dialogue). No matter, I think I still cackled, albeit nervous laughter.

Another jarring instance was that cutie Yukie Nakama played a crude chick, a bit miscast due to her tendency to tap an overly-serious mug, and seemed to rely on redundant speech clues to convey her character’s motivation. While her character wondrously extinguished the whirling village-mentality mysticism, it was almost disturbing to see her beauty frazzled in frumpy Winter-wear, frowning and grimacing away, but kind of fun to revisit her mischievous, temperamental slight.

All in all, the awesome puzzles, odd humor, terrific performances, lend enough reason to recommend, just don’t expect too much of a mystery.

About the Authors

Chris Nelson and Kris Kobayashi-Nelson are the proud co-founders of dreamlogic.net. The adventurous soulmates occasionally take a break from ghost hunting, spelunking, pranking, programming, munching, and 4-hour bike rides to view some killer flicks.