Review of Shippû rondo

I saw this at Japan Cuts 2017 in NY. A great selection and a crowd pleaser for sure. The plot is hilarious and ridiculous, but story manages to make it all believable. A single father of a teenage boy has to retrieve a stolen deadly biological weapon from a huge ski complex. Instead of doing the logical and right thing to do, which would be to call the cops, he is sent to the ski resort, pretending to have a ski vacation with his grumpy son (middle-grader). His plan is to try to ski around and find the marker for the tree under which the weapon is buried (don't ask!!!) Having little skiing experience and being an average goof, he messes up, over and over again and his search becomes more and more desperate. However, he manages to lie his way to getting help from some locals. His son also proves to be a good source of information. While all this is going on, his son develops a friendship with a local middle school student, who is kind of in the middle of a local family drama/mystery. Of course, these two lines of plot converge at the climax and lead to an action and emotion packed ending.

All in all, the acting, the pacing, the story and the plot are all excellently balanced: slapstick comedy meets witty situation comedy meets Bond-ian (well, more like Johnny English-like) spy games meet family drama. Worth mentioning are the skiing and snowboarding scenes, especially the one that later makes it on to YouTube (snowboarding Olympics-hopeful chick battles against guy with weird hat on skis).

Highly recommended for comedy and action film lovers, and anyone who loves snowboarding and skiing.