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Such a frustrating disappointment

Don't Believe the Hype

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Sorry, I can't think of a more non-generic title for this review. But the movie is indeed heart-warming, best executed by Koreeda who does so well in depicting stories of the heart. The plot itself is a bit unique: a doll that comes to life! But after watching the movie, I can say that there's more to that. There is SOUL in the movie, in reference to a supposedly "soulless" material that is the doll/mannequin.Bae Doo-na perfectly breathes life to an otherwise lifeless doll. She best performs the part of a reticent woman who tries to figure for herself if finding a "heart" is a good thing or not. I love the way she carries her face, that innocent, looking-for-answers, finding-my-worth-in-this-world-of-people look on her. Everything in the film falls into place. The cute jewelry-box background music, the aspect of one-sided love, and the journey of finding the meaning of "life" and having a "heart". The atmosphere and over-all feel of the movie is just so cute and lovely. But its simplicity is overshadowed by the bittersweet theme that I came to the realization that it was not as simple as it appears to be. Koreeda hit the mark on this one. He has produced a product that is both perfect on the content and the execution. The length and pacing was fine-tuned, what came out was a movie that has one of the most profound portrayal of love and loneliness in a film ever.

I really did enjoy this movie. I did but...This movie followed one of the more popular themes in the Japanese movies I've seen: loneliness and unfulfillment/inadequacy. But it wasn't as deep. Sometimes I felt like I didn't even know what the characters were feeling or even why. Something was missing.The thing about this movie that bothered me was that there were just so many missed opportunities to really reach home (I don't really know how else to say it.) The movie brings in many minor characters, all of which Nozomi has brief encounters with, to show you their loneliness. But why? Why show these extremely underdeveloped characters who we know near nothing about? Maybe if they had delved deeper in to their lives by increasing their interactions with Nozomi or by having them have "actual" interactions with her(like they had done with the one of the minor characters).Nozomi also seemed a bit "flat" to me. Maybe this was on purpose? Either way, I wanted to see her grow more. She had gained a heart and she did not seem to have used it much. It was as if she was only half alive. She never cried, screamed or expressed any other emotions sans sadness, child like joy/wonder and there is more than that to being human. If they wanted viewers to understand/feel the loneliness that the characters were experiencing they should have built up the story more. Like was there even a climax?Nevertheless, this was a good movie! If you are thinking of watching this please do! It was a cute and sad story.

When I first heard about this movie, I thought it was going to be similar to "LARS AND THE REAL GIRL". But instead of the plot revolving around the guy that is obsessed over a blow up doll, the story is mainly told in the blow up dolls point of view when she comes to life and finds a heart. And yeah some aspects of the film is creepy as it's sounds, kinda creepy version of Pinocchio and also seems to have more depth to it as well. The thing is for the most part, the premise is sort of original and was pretty interesting for the first half of the movie, but slowly started to lose my interest. Basically starts out with a living blow up doll that acts similar to a girl that has amnesia and has to learn everything all over again while falling in love, than later goes in the darker parts of life direction. Which worked fine, but didn't really grab my attention all the way through. The theme is about the value of life that makes us human and goes in the bright and dark side of life in a sort of a fairy tale manner. While also showing how people make substitutes for the stuff they want or have lost. From what I know blow up dolls are made for people that don't have a chance with a real girl, so it's there to help satisfy the sexual desires. I am not sure if Doona Bae was the right actress for this role playing the live blow up doll, but she did a fine job playing all naive and innocent. This is one of those movies where you have to just go with the premise of the movie, although some of the character reactions just doesn't make sense or awkward at times, your just gonna have to go with the flow of how the characters react to a live blow up doll. Although this has some bright elements to it, most of it is pretty depressing while showing life in general in a realistic way and the loss of innocence. I don't know how many japs use blow up dolls as substitutes although I heard that a lot of them uses it. This movie did a decent job of portraying the sad parts of society. All in all it's pretty good fantasy film that reflects on some societies and some people in general. There is also a lot of erotic scenes in this.7.5/10

This is a movie about a sex doll. A sex doll that comes to life and mimics human behavior and grows a heart and learns (spoiler!) to love. Now if you're like me, you might think that that's a laughably stupid premise. And maybe that could be a good thing! Maybe a movie about a sex doll's magical crash course in humanity could satirize an overplayed genre trope, have a few laughs, and maybe muster some heart in spite of its absurdity!Hirokazu Koreeda doesn't seem to think so. His laughless plastic person drama Air Doll fancies itself a whimsical portrait of love and loneliness that--whoa ho ho!--might just have something to say about the human condition. He plays this stupid idea completely straight, and the result is an overlong, self-congratulatory pile of witless quirk and existential platitudes so over the top that it would be right at home in the filmography of Trey Parker and Matt Stone.It's a shame, because Air Doll features a compelling performance from Bae Doona as the sex doll, and it flirts with some interesting ideas--maybe the line between us and the refuse around us is a bit more arbitrary than we'd like to admit, etc.--but the film ultimately completely undermines any potential philosophical weight it might have had through its utter lack of any semblance of self-awareness.The film puts an embarrassing amount of effort into establishing the sex doll as innocent and naive and just the most precious thing you ever done saw--look, the sex doll thinks the city is beautiful! look, the sex doll is holding hands with children! this isn't completely effing ridiculous, it's adorable! right? right?And then, before it's even mastered language, the sex doll starts musing on the nature of existence through suddenly omniscient voice-over, because yeah, I guess it's narrating this thing all of the sudden.And then, character after character starts to notice that hey, you know what, we're not so different you and I, sex doll. Humans and sex dolls that is.And I could enjoy this movie--hell, I could love this movie, seeing as I have a capacity for irony that the filmmaking team apparently lacks--but then this movie starts rolling out the "big moment" ham fisted emotional beats, and none of it hits me at all. This movie just simply fails to make me feel anything, and it makes its intentions so clear, and it tries so damn hard, and it's aiming for tears every ten minutes and I just cannot take this sex doll odyssey seriously.Idunno, maybe Air Doll has a future as a really bad cult movie; all I know is that it has a present as a really bad bad movie. -TK 9/7/10