Nintama Rantarô
Director: Takashi Miike
Writer: Yoshio Urasawa
Based on: Sōbē Amako’s manga
Cast: Seishirô Katô, Shidô Nakamura, Rei Dan, Susumu Terajima, Takahiro Miura
Part of: /slash Filmfestival

Plot:
Rantaro (Seishirô Katô) gets sent to ninja academy by his parents (Shidô Nakamura, Rei Dan) to finally elevate the family from low-ranking ninjas to somehing more prominent. But when Rantaro gets to school, things aren’t really that glamorous and he isn’t doing that well. But he fights his way through and quickly makes friends. But living in a ninja academy means more than just classes: one day, the academy gets involved when another ninja clan attacks a hairdresser.

Ninja Kids!!! is okay. It’s clearly made for kids and there’s nothing much an adult gets to hold on to. That’s nothing bad, of course, but it does means that I’m clearly not the target audience.

Miike has kind of an unique and rather likeable crack in his worldview which tends to make his films a lot of fun. And that crack is fully present in this movie. He did make me laugh with it too, but in the long run the film was just too infantile for me. I guess I’m just spoiled by kids movies that are made for adults, too.

And this movie certainly isn’t. Kids probably won’t mind that the plot is frayed, all over the place, can’t shake an episodic feel and that it doesn’t actually make a lick of sense. Kids probably won’t mind that the characters are mostly ridiculous and one-dimensional. Probably. But I minded.

It also bothered me that there were barely any women in the film in the first place and that the movie just makes a throw-away reference to the girls’ ninja class, but then, when the entire academy shows up to battle the other ninjas, the girls are nowhere to be seen. That is just not something I can overlook that easily.

I did enjoy the make-up that goes for the look of the manga in all its excessiveness. Looks weird sometimes, but it’s fun. Just not fun enough to make up for the shortcomings.

Summarising: okay for kids.