Review of Suzume
“Suzume” is what happens when You have an awesome premise and are not sure what to do with it. One day a young girl gives directions to a wandering stranger. Enchanted by him, she decides to see his destination for herself. She stumbles upon a lone door, surrounded by water, in the middle of ruins of an old town. Driven by curiosity she opens the door to witness a different place - a beautiful plane with a night sky. Without the means to step into that plane she unwillingly becomes the catalyst for events that could kill thousands of people. Now, with the help of thestranger she met earlier she embarks on a journey to make things right again.
I’m going to say it at the start. This movie has some serious writing problems. Both with pacing and motivations of the characters. Not saying anything about the nonsense that goes on between the main duo. It feels like it was written by a film student and not someone who has a lot of experience in the business.
As for the main cast
Suzume - our titular heroine and a girl that should have had a talk about not falling in love with men that get turned into chairs. In all seriousness she’s a high school student that acts before thinking. She’s brave but emotional (at least to a point). She lost her mother at an early age and was taken in by her aunt, who treated her as her own child. Despite that she has little to no problems abandoning her only mother figure for a man she just met and an adventure that could end her life. She doesn’t really try to explain anything to her guardian, she just goes and then has the nerve to tell her aunt that she’s suffocating. Not really a great role model.
Souta - A young man, studying to be a teacher, who travels Japan in search of doors that could bring calamity and closes them. He encounters Suzume on one such mission and is pretty quickly turned into a chair thanks to her actions. Despite that he’s a competent source of knowledge for Suzume and an occasional comic relief. He is horribly underutilised in this story, working mostly as a dumb motivation for Suzume. He does get a pretty big role towards the end but it gets wasted.
The rest of the cast is forgettable, well maybe except the aunt but she doesn’t have a big role in the overall plot so I’m not wasting time on her.
The main problem with this movie is the fact that it wants to do too much in too little time. Thanks to that the whole thing feels like a draft more than a thought out script.
Starting with the main girl herself. She has a motivation but it’s a very selfish motivation. Normally I wouldn't mind that but in this case there is a problem - her motivation is love. She fell in love with Souta almost immediately. He didn’t even do anything special to start her fascination. He just asked for directions. I know there is this whole, bullshit plot excuse for this that we get served at the end, but it’s still stupid. The girl knows him longer as a talking chair than a human and is still down for it. She even kisses him while in his chair form. She also sits and stands on him but I’m chalking it up to writer fetishes.
The second thing that is really infuriating, is that whatever trouble she gets into there is ALWAYS someone, or something, to get her out of it. People just help her out the moment she needs it. Needs transport? She meets a girl with a bicycle and later a student with a car. Needs shelter? A mother of two just picks her up. The world just bends over backwards for her. Now granted it’s not totally free and she does repays the kindness but it’s still lazy writing. Let me see her regret this journey, let me see her determination in the face of challenges (yes we do get ONE example of that at the end but that’s not enough). For eff’s sake, she’s the reason a young man was turned into a chair and yet she doesn’t seem to be sorry for that in any way, shape or form. If anything she uses that as an excuse to go on an adventure. I’m not saying she should cry over it every 5 minutes but at least give me a scene when she and Souta have a heart to heart about her fault in this mess. Give me anything that would make me think of her as something more than a spoiled brat that always gets her way.
When it comes to Souta his main problem is that he’s barely in the movie. We do get a pretty solid scene of him benign on the edge, just one step away from becoming just a normal inanimate object and that Suzume is the only thing keeping him on this side but it’s over so fast and done so lazily that it barely matters. We get a lot more of his fear at the end but because of the situation we get it at, it means close to nothing. Also why the hell a student at a university, close to becoming a teacher, even entertains the thought of a relationship with a highschool girl. Seriously. WTF? At least give me a good reason for that.
Now for the themes… I honestly don’t know what to tell You about it. This movie wants to do so much in such little time that it loses its message. Except maybe one, but I’ll get to that. It tries to be a coming of age story about a girl that’s searching for her own path. It tries, and fails miserably, to be a romance. It tries to be a drama. It even tries to be a fantasy story. Fails on most accounts. The fantasy elements are used as an excuse for the last scene. I don’t mind it. It is actually pretty solid. If the movie would get rid of the bullshit worm aspect of it and replace it with something more personal I think I would really like it. As it stands it uses the fantasy and drama elements for cheap laughs and… nothing really more. The drama parts are so badly set up that I truly didn’t care about the implications (which were none by the way) of the big argument between Suzume and her aunt. The only good message I got from the movie is that sometimes You do get to choose Your family. It’s not a bad message but the movie doesn’t focus on it enough to make it stick the landing.
When it comes down to it I really don't have much good to say about the writing. It’s full of cheap tricks to make You think You care and uses a shit load of plot armor and deus ex machinas to push the plot forward.
That said it does use those cheap tricks pretty well. Well enough for me not to quick at the 20 minute mark at least. Despite being lazy and lacking anything that could pretend to be logic, the movie is a pretty entertaining watch. As long as You don’t think about the plot too much.
If anything I think You can enjoy it for it’s visual and audio qualities