Niji o tsukamu otoko: Nangoku funto-hen

The Rainbow Seeker 2 is disappointing by Yoji Yamada's standards. I was pretty forgiving toward the first movie, even though it had some problems and wasn't one of the director's best. It had some nice tributes to classic films, and a straightforward story that still managed to be fairly pleasant. It was clean and efficient enough a film, and though it had some pretty blatant attempts at tugging on the heartstrings, it got to me, because I liked the films it was homaging and I like Yamada's films... particularly the Tora-san series, which was explicitly paid tribute to at The Rainbow Seeker's end.

This sequel, though, just doesn't quite come together. It only comes close to hitting the decent highs from the first movie when it's talking about or showing other movies. The emphasis here seems to be on Japanese cinema above all else, with the main character describing Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru and a cinema at one point showing Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind outdoors, while it's raining. That latter sequence is probably as memorable as this film gets.

Otherwise, it feels a bit like repurposed elements from an unfilmed Tora-san script. There's some so-so romance and pretty mild comedy, none of which is ever very funny. It was a little hard to care on a dramatic level, too. All it has going for it is a handful of decent scenes and the overall polish/style that can be expected from Yamada, albeit without being quite as warm or endearing as such things are in his better films. It was a disappointment, sadly, and I don't think there's a ton of harm with this one staying stranded in relative obscurity.