My Neighbors the Yamadas Movie Review

The animation of My Neighbors the Yamadas is often drawn in a style reminiscent of a child's crayon sketches and is occasionally narrated by the Yamada family's daughter, Nonoko. The film doesn't follow a specific plot or story line but rather like memories, it is episodic in nature, each episode relating some aspect of family life. The opening scenes introduce the main family members from Nonoko's point-of-view. She begins with her grandmother stopping to admire a neighbor's flowers (or so it seems). The followers are the gentleman's pride and joy and grandmother claims she has never seen the like. When she asks, "What species?" the neighbor begins giving the names of the flowers – the camera angle moves to grandmother's point-of-view and revealing a caterpillar nestled among the blossoms. Grandmother points to the caterpillar and replies, "No, I meant the caterpillar." Just before departing she adds to the caterpillar, "Grow up into a beautiful butterfly as gaudy as these flowers." The other characters are introduced in similar comic scenes of Japanese domesticity – mother, pondering what to make for dinner determines to make a "special" curry in spite of the fact that curry seems to be a regular staple in the Yamada household and dad, expounding the virtues of education to his son, gets so tongue tied that his speech amounts to little more than eloquent gibberish.

A smart and funny film with many insights about the nature of life, My Neighbors the Yamadas inter-cuts fanciful fantasy sequences with more straightforward narrative devices. In one early scene, the family's son, Noboru suffers a minor existential crisis after reading a manga; he insists that if he had different parents his life would be different. His parents fruitlessly point out that if they hadn't married, Noboru and his sister wouldn't exist to which Noboru argues that if he had cooler parents he'd just be their kid. Meanwhile, Nonoko suddenly realizes there was a time when her mom and dad were not married. In a fantasy sequence, which I suppose, is meant to be her imagination, mom and dad are seen riding an Olympic bobsled while wearing traditional Japanese wedding garb. The bobsled track becomes a wedding cake as an off-screen voice intones about the wonderful life the couple is embarking on. As the speaker continues, the bobsled becomes a sail boat on the ocean.

The ocean begins calm but soon grows stormy and fierce and in a moment reminiscent of the painting "The Giant Wave", the little boat is tossed about by huge waves. And as the subject of children is brought up the boat crashes to the shore and becomes a tractor passing through a cabbage fields, farmers' wives plucking babies from the cabbages as storks fly overhead. The sequence depicting the birth of the Yamadas' children first shows mom and dad plucking a giant peach from a stream, when the peach is opened the pit is their son. Floating further upstream the Yamadas come to a bamboo forest, when dad cuts down a stalk of bamboo, he finds his daughter inside. The background art of each sequence of the fantasy is drawn in a different style ranging from Chinese brush painting and Japanese ink prints to children's book illustration. The characters, however, remain the sketchy style introduced in the opening frames.

Although the animation is whimsical and often fantastical, the dialogue and narration, no doubt taken from real life conversations, and at turns funny, cynical, and heart warming, is realistic, and conveys many truths about family life. For example, one of the speakers at the Yamadas' wedding reminds her listeners of the many joys and sorrows of family life. Comparing life to a voyage by ship or boat she reminds them that families can weather any crisis as long as they hold onto one another, it's in the times of calm that families can be torn apart as each individual looks out only for himself and forgets about the other members of the family.

This point is driven home for the Yamadas when, driving home from the mall they realize that their daughter isn't in the car. In all the hustle-bustle and bickering, they left Nonoko by herself at the mall and went on their selfish, grumpy way. While they make their way back to the mall, to find her, bickering all the while, Nonoko looks after a smaller kid named Toshio, who is also lost. From Nonoko's perspective it's her family who has gotten lost. The Yamada family has trouble even getting back to the mall due to the Tokyo area's infamous traffic, Nonoko on the other hand proves she's extremely resourceful when she helps Toshio track down his mother. The Yamada's arrive at the mall just as Nonoko departs with someone else. Everything turns out happily when it is discovered that Nonoko has gone home with her auntie instead of waiting at the mall.

Other episodes deal with home economics, marriage woes, bonding between father and son, parenthood, adolescence, mortality and other issues of family life. Although the film has its own distinctive feel, its sensibilities are similar to those of Peanuts' creator Charles Schultz if Charles had grown up in Japan. The observations of family life are wry, witty, funny, sad, cynical, true and yet warm and sentimental. And although the viewer is always aware of watching animation, the characters have more depth and humanity than any number of American made live-action "family comedies". Although some themes of the film are rooted in Japanese culture, it is for the most part a universal film: no matter the culture we've all known and maybe even loved seemingly inept and put on fathers such as Takashi; hard-working if occasionally forgetful housewives like Matsuko; rebellious but well meaning teenagers like Noboru; cute kids who are sometimes wise beyond their years like Nonoko; and gruff but lovable grandparents like Shige.

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