Penguin Highway - Movie Review

Penguin Highway premiered at the Fantasia International Film Festival in Canada last year and then it was released in Japan. Went through a lot of film festivals, animation-based ones primarily, and will soon be released in America here in the coming weeks. And this is directed by Hiroyasu Ishida and is his first feature, which follows a young boy who's extremely smart. He's in fourth grade, way ahead of everyone else in his class. He takes extensive notes of everything that he discovers or things that he's curious about. He conducts experiments regularly. His father gives him chores to do and most of these chores revolve around some sort of scientific experiment or exploration. And he's extremely excited about doing this. And one day, penguins show up in a park. There's no explanation for why the penguins are suddenly there. And of course, as a young budding scientist, he wants to explore why this happened. And in so doing, he embarks on an adventure with another student from his class who's also interested in science. Together, they study another strange find in a nearby forest, while at the same time, he's experiencing his first ever crush on a dental assistant who's a lot older than he is. And she might just so have a weird connection with all of these events. Penguin Highway is one of the strangest films I've seen in a long time, and it's perfectly fine with being that. In fact, this film does not care about rules. It is filled with so many unexplainable events and phenomena, and it asks us to accept what we see and roll with it. Don't get me wrong, this is no Masaaki Yuasa film like Mind Game or Night is Short Walk On Girl. There's a sensible storyline that develops throughout this film, even though I love both those movies I just mentioned. This film looks at unexplained phenomena through the eyes of a fourth grader, and his view of these events are different from what most adults would expect. If there were penguins suddenly in my front yard, for instance, I'd probably be freaking the fuck out. But this kid just grabs a notebook and starts taking notes, because he's free still. Even though he's a lot smarter than the other kids his age, he still looks forward to things like this happening, and he views it as an opportunity to advance his knowledge of the world. And this film reminded me what it feels like to be a child, to feel that freedom, to not put so much effort into caring about the things happening around me, but to focus purely on the things that inspire me and that excite me creatively. In the case of the boy in this film, it's not about creativity, it's about the knowledge. It's about looking for an answer, searching for something, digging really deep to figure out why these insane things are happening all around him. And the movie hopes that as audience members, we're not going to look at it and go, what the hell's going on? Why is all this happening? It wants us to just enjoy the ride. And even with his older friend in the film, the dental assistant, she is still trying to figure out exactly what her place in the world is. Because through this boy's experiments, she's learning things about herself, but also getting excited about feeling a lot younger again. And after a while, she finds herself willing to accept the unexplainable at face value and just go with it and see where it leads. This film was based off of a novel written by Tomihiko Morimi. His books also inspired The Night Is Short Walk On Girl and The Tatami Galaxy. And I'm really happy to see one of his works so well translated to a film because he writes science fiction that doesn't necessarily feel like science fiction. Technically, what we see in this movie is sci-fi, but it does not feel that way. It feels like a coming of age movie with this sci-fi background. The film looks beautiful, in particular, the shot structure. It's not just a well-animated film with really wonderfully rendered locales. I loved wherever the director chose to put his camera to highlight his character's journeys because I've always been a big fan of paranormal and investigating it, even in like crazy, stupid Netflix documentaries that aren't real but are fun to watch. Whenever I see a film that uses that as a backdrop to tell a story that feels like it has emotional weight, that's just so satisfying to me. And everything about this movie came together really well. But there is one storyline about it that I thought was just a weird because it has a major element to the plot, and that is this crush that this fourth grader has on the older girl. They focus on it a lot, and he focuses on the woman's body a lot. And I get that that's normal for a 10-year-old boy who's sort of figuring things out. But where most films might take a relationship like that and say, oh, you're just a cute kid and that's adorable, that'll never happen. This film sort of hints that maybe in the future, sort of. And so, I don't know, it was just a little uncomfortable. And I could see some people finding that a little odd. But that's about it in regards to issues I had with this movie. I sat down to watch the film because Eleven Arts was kind enough to send me a screener of it. And I was planning on watching maybe the first half because I had a lot of stuff to do that day. But I found myself so invested in it, I just watched the whole thing. I just completely forgot what my plans were for the rest of the day. And I sat there and I watched the whole thing because I was just so invested in it. It's a really wonderful movie that has a great and unique look at what science fiction could be for a family-based film. Although I could see this being more like 13 and up because of a few things that happened in the movie, just from like a more maturity level. Still, it's definitely aimed at younger audiences or at least people who are around the main character's age. And to see a film like this, that has this sci-fi elements in it, it's just really refreshing. I'm gonna give Penguin Highway an A-. Guys, thank you so much as always for watching. I'm excited for more people to see the film and for it to get a release in the United States. As always guys, look forward to more reviews very soon. And if you like this, you can click right here and get Stuckmanized.