The Family Game

Original title: Kazoku gêmu

1983
1h 47m

IMDb RATING

YOUR RATING

Japanese parents hire a tutor for their foolish son and get a critic of their lifestyle.Japanese parents hire a tutor for their foolish son and get a critic of their lifestyle.Japanese parents hire a tutor for their foolish son and get a critic of their lifestyle.

Director
- Yoshimitsu Morita
Writers
- Yôhei Honma
- Yoshimitsu Morita
Stars

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

7.1/10

1.2K

YOUR RATING

Director
- Yoshimitsu Morita
Writers
- Yôhei Honma
- Yoshimitsu Morita
Stars

See production info at IMDbPro

Awards
- 17 wins & 7 nominations total

Photos6

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Storyline

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Did you know

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Goofs
Towards the beginning of the movie when the father talks to the tutor in the car and the tutor decides to turn on the radio, the radio language is Korean. The radio comes out in Korean and is reporting what President Chun Doo Hwan (the President of South Korea at that time) was doing. This is intentional, playing into the fact that this is a post-modernist film and that there are continual reminders that the viewer is in an altered reality.

Quotes
Mrs. Numata, the mother: My son is not dumb because, as a little boy, he memorized an entire book about roller-coasters.
Yoshimoto, the tutor: Perhaps then he can work in an amusement park.

Connections
Featured in Century of Cinema: Nihon eiga no hyaku nen (1995)

User reviews8

Review

Featured review

5/10

A rather slap-stick portrayal of an important story.

A middle-class Japanese teenager won't study to pass exams to get into high school so a tutor is hired. The tutor, who is basically a slob, gets the done. The family lives in a high-rise apartment across the Sumida River from Tokyo and it is interesting to see what family life is like in that set-up. The teenager's mother tries valiantly to see her children succeed in a rather chaotic situation.

The Japanese education system is a rat-race to pass exams. It deserves a better story than this one.