Hula Girls (2006, Japan)

I usually watch a film twice when I rent it on DVD, and the second viewing really benefited my liking this film. Watching a film twice on DVD is about the same as seeing it once in a theater. I think in a theater, your eye catches much more screen information just because of the size of the screen, and, of course, in a theater you're just concentrating on watching the film.

Almost every fault I found in the film during the first viewing, I noticed during the second viewing that the filmmaker actually did cover it. It's not an air-tight film, but definitely enjoyable. I'd give it 8 out of 10 tomatoes.

Loosely based on a true story, the film is set in the 60's in a mining town in northeastern Japan. The mine is set to close and the locals aren't happy and rebel against a seeming-frivolous mining company idea to build a "Hawaii center" to shift the town to tourism. A handful of local girls are interested in the offer of hula lessons, and an urbane, out-of-place, professional dancer from Tokyo with secrets in her past is hired to teach.

It's an against-all-odds triumph film, arguably feel-good, but I think it captures the tensions and difficulties fairly well. I think it would help to know that none of the actors were dancers (which lends to credibility that a bunch of miner's daughters could accomplish what they did), and the real-life Hawaii center enjoyed a great deal of success (which makes the finale seem not-so-overblown).

I think the strongest point of the film is that feel-good aspect, so if you're not into feel-good, you might want to skip it. The pace of the film is good and the characters likeable and more or less credible. The weakest point of the film, I think, is character development. I didn't feel I really got to know them and their motivations.