In Japanese with English & Chinese Subtitles
Genre: Comedy/Romance
Director: Kwak Jae Yong
Cast: Keisuke Koide, Haruka Ayase, Naoko Niya, Risa Ai, Kei Tanaka, Suzunosuke
RunTime: 2 hrs 2 mins
Released By: Scorpio East & GV
Rating: PG
Official Website: http://cyborg.gyao.jp/

Soundtrack: REVIEW OF "CYBORG SHE" OFFICIAL SOUNDTRACK

Opening Day: 21 August 2008

Synopsis:

Jiro (Keisuke Koide) has no one to celebrate his birthday with. He is a lonely guy living a lonely life. On his twentieth birthday, he goes to a department store to buy himself a present. There he runs into a cute girl in a tattered bodysuit that looks like it has been burned in a fire. “She” changes into a dress in the store, and storms out of the place without even paying. “She” later appears at a restaurant where Jiro is eating. “It’s my birthday as well.” Jiro ends up spending time with this girl on his birthday. Because she is so unpredictable and wild, they end up not paying their bill, and Jiro is chased and then roughed up by the police. Jiro has never had such an exciting night before. He is in awe of her, and strongly attracted to her, but then she says something strange and disappears. To Jiro, today has become the most memorable and brilliant day of his life.

Movie Review:

Can't say I didn't expect greater things from this movie. I was looking forward to some good ole romantic comedy with heady dosages of cuteness and unbelievably good-looking leads. How about a suicidal cyborg who time travels to kill herself? While in the past, she met with her love interest before they were technically supposed to meet and all love breaks loose. She's a cyborg, but at least he's okay?

At least, this was the plot I had in mind while waiting for the movie to begin in the freezing theater. Can reviewers dream of better plots?

And do cyborgs fulfill expectations?

Turns out Korean writer-director Kwak Jae-Young embarks on yet another project to provide comic relief for himself in part three of his trilogy on wimp-heroine romances. The object of objectification this occasion was the glamour model-turned-actress Haruka Ayase. She put in a credible show as the she-cyborg, but I can't say the same about the lingering shots on her breasts. I tend to think she had moved on since Crying Out Love, in the Center of the World, enough for us to forget about the boobs, but Kwak apparently has other ideas.

The object of abject fortune, Keisuke Koide, he of the feminine fame as "Masumi-chan" in Nodame Cantabile, put in another emasculated performance as the geek lead of the show; the only difference between his hammy performances in both shows turn out to be the replacement of his harrowing whiskers in Nodame for a bunch of supermassive blackheads here.

Actually, the film, premised on the classic juxtaposition-exposition brought about by time-travel, has the promise of a good mind-bending science-fiction flick. The movie threatened to provoke real thoughts in a couple of scenes, such as the idea of a continuous time loop of love and tragedy, but it was quickly undone by three simple mis-steps: Firstly, the little magic created by the movie's first few scenes were lost in the subsequent visual gags, which was in turn overwhelmed by an epic disaster two-thirds into the story. What? Are we supposed to feel romanticized, tickled or confused in a single seating? Secondly, the Tokyo buildings kept falling on Ms Ayase it became funny. And Kwak had to burn in all in his last joke (of an ending) on the audience.

Movie Rating:



(As the crazy grammar in the title suggests, Cyborg She titillates with a hot female lead and some quirky genre cross-over, but the movie ultimately obfuscates with a messy plot)

Review by Tyler Lim