I am writing this coz this movie was unique and caught my attention. The plot summary given about it don't match the story at all. It's very different and somewhat weird.
1. Things I liked about it :-
The story itself was very well written. It's about the complexity of emotions. How sometimes hate rule over love, when you are not able to be clear about your feelings, when you misunderstand something else as love. If you see the movie considering yourself at her place you will know the reason of every single scene in it. I loved it's ending. It was written beautifully.
2. Things I disliked about it :-
The director wanted it to make special or different idk what? But messed it up. It gave a headache how he displayed some scenes. Pretty much everything was left on audience to create an opinion about . So it confused me sometimes. Characters were some time acting with overdose of emotions so it was kinda hard to interpret thier state of mind.
Overall I will recommend it to people who don't get offended easily.
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Awful, beautiful and bizarre all in one
Huh, those were two incredibly weird hours.I am not familiar with the source material, but I’ve had Hot Gimmick on my watchlist for ages. The preview on Netflix had me genuinely convinced that this movie would be good, but I still couldn’t get around watching it. It was a friend of mine who convinced me that I just had to sit through this, purely for how strange this film really is, so we did.
And boy was she right.
Let’s get one thing out of the way before we start: Hot Gimmick is not good. The “story” is probably up there with one of the worst I have ever seen in a romance movie. The characters were all underdeveloped, unlikable or just downright sex-offenders. The pacing and the way this is cut, was very confusing to say the least. Every single performance had me cringing hard. On almost every level Hot Gimmick is a failure. And yet there is something more to it. But let me elaborate.
One can’t critique a movie without talking about the plot but when it comes to Hot Gimmick this is kind of a hard task. I feel like this film both had too little AND too much going on, all at the same time. Like, I am having a really had time, trying to remember like a single complete arc, but at the same time, I was confused about what actually was happening through the entirety of the movie. No one really does anything, and yet there is this whole universe set up with overly convoluted dynamics and backstories. It felt like everything that actually mattered, happened off-screen. The main girl is in love with idol-boy from the beginning of the movie but we never find out why or since when. She has this really complex family story with an adopted brother that only gets explained very briefly in a throwaway line that is easy to miss. Everyone’s parents in this are actually important and a vital part of the characters’ backstories, yet we don’t see a single one of them on screen, aside from main girl’s mom (who arguably was the only parent who didn’t matter in this whole debacle). Everything resembling a plot already happened before the movie even started. The protagonist never does anything, things just happen to her. It was like the film wasn’t even about her, she’s the only one that doesn’t get a backstory, so all Hot Gimmick movie really is, is her reacting to the past of other people. And since nothing is actually actively happening, all we’re left with is a story with already set rules that never really get explained nor challenged.
The characters, and even calling them that feels like a stretch, were a nightmare. As briefly mentioned in the above paragraph, our protagonist was one of the most passive ones I have ever seen. She doesn’t really have an opinion on anything and seems to be doing things without a purpose in mind. She’s supposed to be this symbol of naivety and purity and yet whenever anyone makes a move on her, she simply goes along with it. The only bit of a personality we get to see is when she refers to herself as ugly, which she does a lot.
The only character that I can call an actual character with personality was the protagonist’s sister but she was so insignificant to the plot that there wasn’t even a real reason for her to be here. Still, I was always happy to see her, she was a breath of fresh air.
I wanted all of the love interest dead, no exaggeration. At this point, I am used to Asian dramas blurring the lines of consent, sadly, but the extent and frequency to which this happened here was one that I could no longer overlook. I was deeply uncomfortable with many scenes in this movie. The male characters were incredibly cruel to our protagonist throughout the entire runtime and no one really grew from it. I guess her big brother was kind of unproblematic, or at least he would have been, if he didn’t have the hots for his little sister, so yeah there’s that. They also don’t do much, besides being romantically interested in the female lead.
Which brings us to our next problem: there is no chemistry. And that’s like the most important thing in a love story. I am willing to forgive a romance a lot if the couple has chemistry. Well, this film had three pairings and not a single one of them had any. But how could they, no one really has a legit reason to like anyone here. The female lead has as much personality as an IKEA cardboard box that was left in the rain and all the guys do is either sexually harass the girl or victim-blame her.
There was one (1!!!) scene where I felt like a couple had chemistry, it was one where glasses man and wet-cardboard-box-girl walked home side-by-side and had pretty legit banter. In those few minutes, I was almost willing to extent my disbelief and buy that these two characters like each other. Sadly, I wasn’t able to forget their previous scene together where he blackmailed her into kissing him on a public train station so I wasn’t in a very romantic mood.
This movie is gorgeous. I am not kidding, it’s legitimately beautiful. The cinematography is outstanding and I couldn’t name a single shot that wasn’t aesthetically pleasing. But it’s beautiful without a purpose. Art isn’t supposed to just look nice; it’s supposed to make us feel something. And Hot Gimmick failed on that level. Because, while every shot in this looked beautiful, most of them failed to communicate something. There were only very few scenes where I actually understood what they were going for, why something was shown the way it was, what mood it was trying to get across.
And the cutting suffers from the very same problem. Because most of the time the cut of a film isn’t supposed to stand out UNLESS you want to communicate a certain emotion. Action scenes are quickly cut and hectic for a reason, for example. Well in Hot Gimmick everything is cut extremely quickly all the time, for absolutely no reason. Except for one scene that was entirely one-shot, again, with seemingly no particular reason in mind. This made this film extremely hard to watch. Scenes in which the characters were just standing still and calmly talking to each other felt physically exhausting because it was so difficult to keep up with what was going on.
The soundtrack is genuinely kinda nice and something I wouldn’t mind casually listening to , but also dictated the mood instead of accentuating it. However, it did help me decipher, which scenes were supposed to be romantic,
because strictly by the actions of the characters, I never would have been able to guess.
So, you might read all of this and think that I hate Hot Gimmick but you would only be half correct. I gave this 9 stars for Rewatch Value for a reason. The last, let’s say 15 minutes of the movie had me genuinely moved and I don’t even have the slightest clue why. It’s not like I suddenly was invested in the plot, it’s not like I suddenly loved the characters but out of nowhere Hot Gimmick became raw and emotional. There’s this scene, pretty close to the end of the movie, where our female and male lead just randomly run through a park and yell at each other for what felt like an eternity and I was weirdly hooked through the entirety of it. Like for almost two hours, Hot Gimmick had been trying to impress me, with its fancy shots and with its attempts at being poignant, but it needed a shaky handcam and two teenagers incoherently yelling at each other for me to feel something. For the first time in the two-hour run time, I felt like I truly got it. I got what the movie was trying to tell me, got what the characters I thought I didn’t care about were going through. The weird cutting, the cinematography, the seemingly incoherent dialogue all kind of clicked together at that moment. It was fast-paced, awkward, helpless, and clumsy like teenage love is.
It’s absurd, because I can imagine a version of this that could have worked but at the same time, a good version of Hot Gimmick would require to change pretty much everything about it. Still, there is something good in here, I’m just not sure what it is and whatever it may be, it’s very very well hidden. But it’s not just the cinematography, there is something real about this film. For a few minutes, I felt weirdly represented in how honest, how awkward, how bizarre it was. At times I thought “This should have been a three-minute music video” at other times I thought “this should have been a 16 episodes TV show”. I knew what I was watching was objectively bad and yet I couldn’t give up on it.
Sadly, the potential to be good, doesn’t make something good. So Hot Gimmick simply isn’t and I cannot recommend sitting through this madness, unless you're interested in it from a film-making perspective, which was what intrigued me when I watched it. It doesn’t really work as a “so bad it’s good”-movie, for that it simply doesn’t have enough going on and requires too much focus but there are a few unintentionally hilarious scenes (look out for the hot chocolate scene as it had my friends and me laughing out loud).
Usually, when I am talking about wasted potential in a movie or show, I’d say that the basics were there, but the execution failed. Well, Hot Gimmick is the opposite. The very foundation was missing. The plot sucks, the writing’s bad, the performances are weak. And yet it’s beautiful. It’s like a castle built on sand, the very thing Jesus said one should never do.
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The camera work was bad, it really made no sense. There was no logical transitions to it.
The actors are only get what they're given but it was really dry.
It was shortened from the manga into a 2 hour movie and skips a lot of necessary character development.
Overall it was bad at the beginning, good in the middle, and worse at the end.
go read the manga. not saying it portrays good people and it definitely encourages early 'relations' but it had a decent story. the movie explains nothing in their childhood that leads to the story that is presented to you. And because I read this manga in middle school I definitely looked at this from a semi-adult perspective now that I'm 25 lol
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THIS FILM WAS TRAGIC
Upon reading other peoples reviews, I had to ponder whether they were all in the right headspace. This film was an absolutely horrific watch, in fact I shed literal tears. Many of these reviews skip over the horrifying events that occur within the film, for example, the main character kissing her Brother. Biologically related or not, this is still a form of incest and SHOULD NOT BE OVER LOOKED. Beyond this, the cinematography was choppy and confusing, with lots of fast swivels thayt made my head hurt. Plus, the forms of "love" shown within the film were mainly ridiculously toxic and harmful to show on TV when there were no consequences for this behaviour.Furthermore, all of the characters were INSUFFERABLE in which they made horrible decisions while acting as though they had a moral high ground.
Overall, for your own sanity DO NOT WATCH THIS unless you plan to watch with your friends for a laugh as I did. Even then, the scene where she offered herself up to her "Brother" still caused genuine tears to leak from my eyes.
And for anyone who genuinely enjoyed this film, please seek therapy and/or help.
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FUCK NETFLIX!!
FUCK NETFLIX FOR RUINING MY MORNING WITH THIS MOVIE!! MY SISTER HAS BEEN SCREAMING HER HEAD OFF FOR 30 MINUTES NOW AFTER WATCHING THIS TERRIBLENESS!! GAVE THIS MOVIE A 10 FOR ACTING CAUSE THEY REALLY MADE ME HATE THE CHARACTERS. I hate my life and I'm going to go watch 20th century girl now or a thai show or k-pop or ANYTHING ELSE!!!Just to take up space I'm going to name other shows I'd rather watch over this because I'm not spending another second giving this movie time:
- I'd rather watch Love Alarm Season 2
- I'd rather watch Boys over flowers
- I'd rather watch TharnType
- I'd rather listen to Sticker by NCT on repeat
- I'd rather listen to O.O and Tank by NMIXX on repeat
- I'd rather listen to War of Hormones by BTS
Okay I think I'm done for today. The only thing I remotely enjoyed about this movie is that the orange hair guy is pretty and I could sense the effort and how it was trying to be something great, even though it flopped. Don't listen to people on this site. The cinematography is terrible!!! TOOOOO ANY CUTS FOR MY LIKING!!! Why we gotta zoom in on people's eyes and lips to be artistic!! You know what, I'm done. Actually, one last thing. They gloss over the most problematic things that it makes me think that they possibly just forgot that they wrote the bad things they made the characters do and say. I watched this movie on max speed and still understood everything, but was left confused on what the point of it all was. Only gave this movie a three because it made me appreciate somethings I used to hate more because now when I hate something I'm just going to say, "Yea this was bad, but it's not worse than 'Hot Gimmick'."
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WASTE OF TIME!
I understood the message that was being conveyed with the whole story, except for how it ended. Honestly, this movie was just a big waste of time if you ask me. FL was just too submissive and succumbed to everything the MLS were doing. She let herself be taken advantage of multiple times. The MLS were nothing but toxic; neither of the three were good at using personal information against her to manipulate and use her. It was messed up, but for her to end up choosing one out of the three blew me away because neither of the three guys were good in my opinion. They all hurt her.Was this review helpful to you?
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the characters where plying there roll well I would definitely rewatch this just for the way the movie was layout and the story was good there was one part I didn’t like but overall it’s worth watching
I would like to find more movies with this type of layout as this the Director of this film I believe also directored drowning love which is one of my favourite film the story line behind it and to e more time you you watch it the more what is happening makes sense and the more you start to notice
This movie is great and if you do end up watching it I hope you have a similar View on the layout of this film
Sorry this review is long I have to do 500 characters or more so I can’t keep it short and sweet but over all it’s worth h the watch :)
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Stinks
I didn't have a hard time following the story because I read the manga a long long time ago so I had an idea where it was going, this doesn't change from the fact that this: sucked ass.I don't remember if I even liked the manga to begin with, but oh my...this..this stinks.
People are really writing essays on this when really, this drama doesn't even require two working brain cells to understand the message. Because in actuality there's nothing powerful or inspirational about it. On the contrary, the narrative is soooo vapid, toxic and frankly very immature. This has as much depth as a an angsty wattpad book written by a 14 yr old. Also, all characters are deeply unpleasant. And don't get me started on the cinematography, nothing impressive just cringy superficial shots with no intention behind them.
If this is art to you, I beg you to widen your horizon.
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WHAT IS GOING ON???
Ok, firstly, this movie just popped up in my Netflix reccomendations and ofc I had time to watch it. I think it's a really nice movie I don't usually watch Japanese movies or series, but I was really impressed. The story has deep meanings and the actors know what they're doing.(Ok, we have to admit it. Ryoki and Azusa are wayyy tooo HOT.) However, there were a lot of times that I wanted to punch Azusa in the face. I mean, he is an asshole! Like, no matter how difficult your life is, you shouldn't destroy other people's lives.
The plot is way too comfussing and there were a lot of times where I had to rewind the movie to understand it. (I don't know if that is a problem with the movie, or if I am just stupid.)
Seriously, I don't really get it. Like, what is going on with Hatsumi and Ryoki? It's like they have no Idea about what they are doing. I didn't really understand what was going on between them. And also when Hatsumi moved in with her "brother" I was like OMG. That guy is creeping me out! He literatelly looked like he was going to rape her or something.
But it was a pretty good movie. I would watch it again but I am not sure if I would reccomend it to anyone. It's actually difficult to define wether or not the movie is good.
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LIFE .... break me down and build me up ... I will do whatever it takes
WOW - This movie is awesome ... a 10/10 for me, I loved it but think it perhaps may not be for everyone. It is so loaded and 'raw'.The movie was truely beautiful to watch ... so many cinematographic view points, which, to me, were very symbolic and seemed to reflect all the different states of mind of the main characters at any given time ... the shots looking up from below ... shots looking down from on high ... shots in and of 'enclosed' and confining spaces ... views of characters taken from a distance and usually with some kind of barrier between the view and the observed ... the staircase ... all the walkways and bridges to get from one place to another ... very symbolic.
It was also beautiful to listen to. I loved hearing the serene sounds of Pachabel and twinkle twinkle litte star gently weave its way through all the turbulence and intensity of emotions ... from the loud cruel words to the soft venomous betrayals ... the declarations of 'love' ... that fascinating empty clang of racing up and down those metal steps and walkways. The music kept me 'grounded' while watching all the trauma ... it's quite serenity was a fascinating auditory contrast to the sounds of the harsh reality that is life ... it left me feeling like I was embraced by it, as if in the end, everything would be ok, we would get through this and find knowledge and acceptance of self and peace of mind ... or something.
As for the story line, there is a persistent cruelty that runs throughout the movie. The FL, Narita, is at the focus of it. In her naivety, she is constantly being 'broken up' by Azusa; Ryoki and Shinogu ... she picks her self up, changes tact, 'rebuilds' her internal resilience and identity ... and then gets smashed again ... dusts herself off, 'rebuilds' then repeat. It is painful to watch, particularly when you see parts of yourself in that process. It is interesting to see how Narita's reaction to this persistent and ongoing cruelty, in turn affects those who have been using her ... as they too are 'broken down and built up'. Each character in the movie, even the side characters, are all going through an evolutionary process. It is so fascinating to watch the dynamics of that, even though there were some smh and wtf is going on moments.
The actors did an awesome job with their roles, they were just brilliant. This is the second time I have watched this movie and this time around I got even more out of the experience. I will definitely watch it again (for the third time) but I will read the manga first as I am sure that my third viewing will be even more thought provoking and visually and auditorily satisfying.
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Cinematography on a different level
I never really understood this movie, until I watched it a second time, and especially because when I watched it I was not 100 percent into it, but geez the cinematography is a whole other level, I remember my reaction at the very last moments, with my mouth wide open I was following the subtitles and at the same time the images but it was hard. the theme is so soft but at the same time terrifying the characters are so strange but again endearing, nobody in my circle liked this movie but, I strongly recommend you to watch it if you like cinematography. This movie opens your eyes to a whole new genre and I would definitely tell my film teacher about it.Was this review helpful to you?
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