Being interested in personal finance and living in Japan I was interested to see what this movie offered in problems faced and solutions found in regard to the elderly in Japan.
The movie started off quite well showing how elderly and those who take care of them are challenged when things like schooling, elderly care, weddings and funerals suddenly come into their lives. The bank balance was shown on screen with money being taken off for these events and the balance getting less and less much to the dismay of the wife who was bearing the brunt of the financial setbacks.
This was all good but then instead of offering real solutions into how to get out of this debt and become more financially stable we get a story of how they sold their house to live in a share house. While this could work for a few people it is definitely not the desired result for most people in this world I presume. Also, while the wife has been struggling with money and worrying about retirement etc and you'd think realizing the importance of it, in the end she gets 100,000yen (about $1000) and what does she do with it? Save? Invest? Buy something she needs? Nope, she goes out and buys a 97,000yen ($970) handbag! Yes, seriously.
So the movie went from interesting and then downhill pretty fast.
The acting was also pretty bad like most Japanese movies these days. Too much overacting and way too many geinojin (TV personalities) who didn't need to be in the movie in there.
It could have been a good film, and had potential but ultimately failed to deliver.
But still does have some interesting food for thought content, you probably only need to watch the first half of the movie to see it though.
The movie started off quite well showing how elderly and those who take care of them are challenged when things like schooling, elderly care, weddings and funerals suddenly come into their lives. The bank balance was shown on screen with money being taken off for these events and the balance getting less and less much to the dismay of the wife who was bearing the brunt of the financial setbacks.
This was all good but then instead of offering real solutions into how to get out of this debt and become more financially stable we get a story of how they sold their house to live in a share house. While this could work for a few people it is definitely not the desired result for most people in this world I presume. Also, while the wife has been struggling with money and worrying about retirement etc and you'd think realizing the importance of it, in the end she gets 100,000yen (about $1000) and what does she do with it? Save? Invest? Buy something she needs? Nope, she goes out and buys a 97,000yen ($970) handbag! Yes, seriously.
So the movie went from interesting and then downhill pretty fast.
The acting was also pretty bad like most Japanese movies these days. Too much overacting and way too many geinojin (TV personalities) who didn't need to be in the movie in there.
It could have been a good film, and had potential but ultimately failed to deliver.
But still does have some interesting food for thought content, you probably only need to watch the first half of the movie to see it though.